Song of Light and Death
by Distrei
Summary: Sword Art Online, the floating castle Aincrad, was way more than Rei ever bargained for. She expected nothing more than a game. Instead, she got shoved into a fight for her life in a new, unfamiliar, and unforgiving virtual world. She learned new things about herself, what it really meant to love someone else… and what it was like to be faced with hatred and bloodshed.
1. Prologue: Beta Testers

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Sword Art Online. I only own the original characters and locations created specifically by me for this story.

 **Sunday, July 10th, 2022, 11:50 A.M.**

"Kazuto. Heeey, Kazuto, wake up." I poked fruitlessly at the sleeping boy's cheek; nothing I'd tried so far had managed to wake him up. "Well, I'm out of ideas besides just pulling him out of bed by force. What do you think, Kiko-chan?" I glanced over at my friend standing behind me. We were in Kazuto's room; we had plans to go to Akihabara today and Kiko and I decided to meet up with Kazuto at his house, since I lived nearby and she didn't live much further away. However, when we got here he was still asleep, and thus I was crouched down next to his bed, trying to wake him up.

"Hmm..." Kiko put her finger on her chin, then shrugged. "Well, go for it, I guess. No point in wasting any time."

"Fair enough." I stood up, violently pulling Kazuto's covers with me. "Wake UP, dummy!" Fortunately for him, he slept with pajamas on.

"Gwaah!" Kazuto was jolted awake by my sudden shout and the lack of covering. He blinked a few times before realizing that Kiko and I were standing before him. "Kiko!? Rei!? W-What are you doing in my room!?"

"Trying to wake you up so we're not late," I deadpanned.

He rubbed his eyes, still not fully awake. "Late for... what?"

"Seriously… You know what, I'm just going to go downstairs and wait for you to figure it out yourself." I did so, Kiko trailing behind me. "Why the heck is he still asleep so late anyways? You know, I would think he at least had enough sense to set an alarm or something."

Kiko giggled. "I guess not. Anyways, he keeps his room way too clean." She pouted in frustration and crossed her arms. "I couldn't find a single thing to make fun of him for!"

"Oh nooo, whatever will you do... Just tell him he looks like a girl or something, that always gets on his nerves."

"But that's too easy! I've already done that."

I shook my head, marvelling at how ridiculous Kiko could be sometimes. "Really… give him a break, Kiko-chan; you don't have to tease him all the time. He's already bad enough at social interaction."

"You're not much better." She stuck out her tongue at me.

"You little…" I pinched Kiko's cheeks and pulled them, not stopping despite her pleas of mercy.

At this point, Kazuto came down the stairs, stretching his arms. "Sorry about that… Kiko, what did you do now?"

I released Kiko's cheeks, and she promptly ran and hid behind Kazuto. "It's not fair! I was just teasing!"

Kazuto raised his eyebrow at me, and I just rolled my eyes. "Whatever, let's go already."

I turned around, but Kazuto spoke before I could go anywhere. "Hold on... Let me at least eat something, some toast or something won't take long."

"Toast… it's almost time for lunch, not breakfast..." I sighed. "Come on, we don't have much time."

"Please, it's just some toast, it doesn't take long." He walked over to the kitchen and started making his beloved toast.

"Okay, tell me something. How long does it take to get from here to Kawagoe Station?"

Kazuto stopped for a moment to think. "Er… 30 minutes? Probably around 20 if you run."

"And how long does it take to get to Akihabara Station from there?"

"... About an hour."

"And the SAO beta sign up starts when?"

"1:30… Calm down, it's not like we need to be there the second they open."

"Yeah, but it's going to be really busy! I'd rather not wait forever standing in line. Let's get going already! Come on, Ki—What? Where'd Kiko go?" I spun around to look for her, and I caught a glimpse of her long brown ponytail going out the door. "Jeez, hurry up, Kazuto!" I rushed out after Kiko, and I could hear Kazuto's footsteps behind me a couple seconds later.

Kiko looked over at me and grinned once I caught up to her. "Hehe, about time you got going."

"It's not my fault that Kazuto is lazy."

Kazuto walked up next to me, a piece of toast in his hand. "Hey, I'm not lazy. I just wanted something to eat."

"Yeah, and you were also asleep almost until noon."

"That doesn't make me lazy… I was up late last night."

Kiko rolled her eyes. "Yeah, sure. Now hurry up, girly-boy, I don't want to have to wait around for forever since _someone_ is so lazy."

"Hey!"

"Really, Kiko-chan..."

* * *

 **Monday, August 1st, 11:55 A.M.**

The beta sign up that was held in Akihabara was as busy as I expected; quite a few people showed up for it. Soon after the beta had been announced, a rumor spread around that signing up in person would get you an extra chance at getting in. It was just a rumor, but I figured that it held some weight; what other reason would there be for a sign up event like that to be held? Fortunately, they had tons of stations set up for signing up, so there actually wasn't much of a wait, and me rushing Kazuto was kind of unnecessary. After Kazuto and I signed up, we went around Akihabara for a while. It was definitely good for us to get out for once; neither Kazuto nor I were exactly socially active people, and we probably would be even less so for the next month. About a week ago, both of us had gotten an email confirming that we had been accepted to participate in the beta test; it also had some basic information about the game, but I didn't take the time to read it.

Today was the start of the beta test, and the game would be opening up at noon. Fortunately, the test period lined up almost perfectly with summer break, so I had no school to worry about. After waiting the last few minutes for the beta to start, I put on my NerveGear and uttered "Link Start" to finally dive into the game. The device ran through its usual sensory checks and startup, and I was greeted by a simple welcome and prompt.

『Welcome to Sword Art Online』

『No character data detected. Create a character?』

『Y/N』

I thought it was kind of odd that there was an option to _not_ create a character, but I didn't make much of it. The game had yet to give me a physical appearance, so I simply focused on the 『Y』, which took me to a new interface. The first thing I saw was a display of myself in front of me. About 150 centimeters tall, messy black hair that fell down to my waist, and a slightly above average bust; it was me, no doubts there. There were various menus to the right of the avatar containing all of the customization options. I could change the various proportions of my avatar via sliders or by manipulating the display directly, but I elected to leave that unchanged to avoid having any issues moving around, although increasing my height by a few centimeters was certainly tempting.

I didn't want to look exactly identical to my real self, so I did change a few things. My long hair would probably get in the way while fighting, so I changed it to a short ponytail. I changed my hair color to a light gray, and changed the color of my eyes to a much lighter, almost sky blue rather than their usual deep blue. I stuck with the default plain blue shirt, but changed the default skirt to khaki-colored pants. I also had a basic leather chestpiece, which only had a couple options to change the style. My shoes didn't have many options either. After I was done, I hit confirm, which brought up a window to enter a name.

After some deliberation, I couldn't think of anything, so decided to just use my real name, and typed in 『Rei』 using the virtual keyboard floating in front of me. Kazuto had said to me before that using your real name online generally wasn't a good idea, but I always thought that he was exaggerating a bit; it wasn't like I was using my full name, and people had no reason to suspect that Rei was my given name, anyways. I tapped the confirm button, which brought me to yet another menu. This one asked me to choose a basic weapon skill to start with. There were a few different options, though not as many as I expected. Perhaps more diverse weapon types would become available later.

I stood there in thought for a moment, trying to decide what weapon to use. Two-handed weapons were out; I never liked slow, strength-based weapons in the first place, and using a weapon that was the same height as me, if not taller, was… unappealing. Basic one-handed swords were just kind of generic, so I wanted something a bit different. I didn't want a rapier, either; while they probably would have some slashing ability, I didn't want to have to focus on thrusting attacks. The One-handed Curved Blade skill had the opposite problem; they were poor at thrusting attacks and excelled at slashing, and I would rather be able to do both. The reach of claw weapons was a little too short for me to feel comfortable, so all that was left for me to choose was the Dagger skill. After confirming my selection, I was engulfed by a strange light effect, and when it was done, I found myself standing in a large plaza, with a system message hanging in front of me.

『Entering Safe Area: Starting City』

Kazuto had agreed to meet up with me in the initial starting area, so I walked over to the edge of the plaza to wait for him. It took a while for how amazing this was to really sink in. Everything looked really realistic. If I focused on a specific spot, I could even see small details, like the coarse texture of a brick. If I didn't focus, though, or stood at a distance, the details would disappear, making the brick look smooth. Also, while the other player's faces looked lifelike, there was a strange… polygonal quality to them. I noticed the same thing during the character creation; it was definitely me that the game was replicating, but my face looked more smooth, more symmetrical. I guess recreating finer details is hard to do on such a large scale.

While I was looking around, I noticed a few people swiping at the air with their hands. A few of them didn't accomplish anything by doing so, but others got a menu to open up in front of them. I focused on one person trying to open their menu, and a green cursor appeared above their head. Ignoring the game UI for the moment, I looked at their hand, trying to see if they were doing anything specific. It looked like the player swiped down with two fingers extended to open the menu, so I tried the same.

… Nothing.

 _I'm regretting not reading the info that was in that email… Did I do something wrong? Why didn't it work?_ I looked around again, trying to spot more people opening the menu, focusing on how they were moving their hand. _They're raising their hand up and swiping down quickly, extending only two fingers… it looks like using your middle and index fingers or index and thumb both work. I didn't do anything different, so… Oh._

I tried the same motion, this time with my right hand instead of my left. Sure enough, the menu opened up. On the left, it displayed various information: my current life total, level, experience points, equipped gear, and skills. The center of the menu had various options: 『Inventory』, 『Skills』, 『Friends』, 『Party』, 『Guild』, 『Map』, and 『Options』. I explored the various menus while I waited for Kazuto to show up.

Looking around at the other people in the plaza, I realized a small problem; I had no way of seeing other player's names. Focusing on one person would result in a cursor appearing above their heads, but I saw no option to view their name—or any other option for that matter. Maybe you had to give someone your name first before it would be displayed. In any case, I had no way of knowing which player was Kazuto. He had told me that his avatar's name would probably be Kirito, but I didn't exactly feel like going around asking a thousand people who they were. There were still a few people spawning in at the center of the plaza, so it was possible that he hadn't finished making his character yet; I decided to go stand over near the center to have a better view of the incoming players. If I was lucky, he would recognize me after spawning in, since I hadn't changed my appearance much.

After waiting for another 15 minutes, a player appeared who, after marvelling at the surroundings, shouted out. "Hey, Rei, are you here yet?"

I shook my head. _Yeah, that's probably Kazuto._ I walked up behind the player, tapping him on the shoulder. "Hey, doofus. That you, Kazuto?"

The player turned around and grinned at me. "Yep. Though, it's Kirito in here, remember." Sure enough, as he said his name, it appeared next to the cursor hovering above his head. His appearance… to sum it up in a few words, I would call it 'generic bishounen protagonist,' and it looked like he put _way_ too much effort into it.

"What took you so long? And what's with that ridiculous avatar?"

"W-What? Ridiculous?"

"Yeah, ridiculous. Well, enough standing around, let's go figure out how to play this." Unsure of which way to go, I decided to just follow the largest road, which went north from the plaza.

"Hey, wait up!" Kirito wasn't ready for me to get going so suddenly, and had to jog a bit to catch up. "Um...Do you know how to open the menu? I didn't really read the info that was included in the confirmation email."

"Yeah, I didn't either… Swipe down with your right hand. You have to extend your middle and index fingers. Index and thumb works too."

It took Kirito a few tries to get the motion down. "Okay, got it. … How do you send friend requests to people? I don't see an option for it."

"Huh, I dunno. If you focus your attention on someone, a cursor should appear above their head. Maybe it's something to do with that."

Kirito looked over at me, then looked above my head, which was roughly his eye level. "Yeah, there's a green cursor… it's not doing anything, though."

"Hmm… maybe try tapping it? If sight doesn't work, the other method of interacting with stuff seems to be touch."

He raised his hand and poked at the air, presumably where the cursor was in his vision. "Ah! That worked. There's a few options…"

I did the same with his cursor, looking at the options available. 『Add as Friend』, 『Invite to Party』, 『Request Trade』, 『Request Duel』, and 『Block Communication』. The last one was also an option in the 『Friends』 menu, which allowed you to input a player name. I found it odd that there wasn't a similar option for adding friends, though.

I sent Kirito a friend request and invited him to a party, both of which he accepted. He had said before that he usually preferred playing solo, but he agreed to party up for the start of the beta.

"Now that that's done with, we should figure out how fighting works."

Kirito shrugged. "Eh, can't be that hard."

"Easy for you to say. You're probably the only person here who has any prior experience actually using a sword. Besides, isn't there some sort of system to help with attacks?"

"Yeah… I wonder how that..." he trailed off as we exited the main gate of the city, which prompted a new system message to appear.

『Leaving Safe Area』

The view was astounding. Directly outside the gates were gentle rolling grasslands, with a few small lakes dotted around. Two paths split from the main gate, one heading west towards a dense forest, the other east towards a large lake. Off in the distance I could see various mountains, some of which almost reached the bottom of the next floor. I couldn't see the sun due to the bottom of the floor above us, but the light from the gap between the floors reflected off of the lakes, causing them all to sparkle.

"Wow… I was expecting the view to be good, but this is amazing…"

Kirito chuckled. "Yeah, they really went all-out on this, huh. But we'll have time for sightseeing later, for now let's go fight some of those boars." He pointed at the numerous blue-furred boars roaming around the grasslands.

I nodded. "Just don't do something stupid and get us killed."

"Why would it be my fault? You're the one who doesn't know how to fight."

I unsheathed my dagger and levelled it at him menacingly. "Keep it up and I'll use this on you instead of the boars."

He raised his hands in defense while grinning. "Hey, calm down... Not like you'd be able to hit me anyways."

After saying that, he dashed off towards the boars to avoid my rage. "Why you—!" I chased after him, shouting at him all the way.

Thus, our month-long adventure in the SAO beta began.

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 **Hey, I really appreciate you taking the time to read my first story! It feels really awesome to finally get this off the ground. Between my extreme procrastination and my rewriting and re-rewriting of this prologue, there's probably a good three or four months from when I first started coming up with ideas for this story to now. Although, to be honest, I'm kind of grateful for the few months of planning time; looking at my initial plans and what they look like now, if I hadn't procrastinated this would look very different—and probably much worse.**

 **Writing this prologue has really been eating at me… I really wanted to have some sort of introduction before going into the full release of SAO, but I had some trouble getting it right at first—it's all peachy now, though. It definitely helps to better establish Rei and Kazuto being friends, and Rei being a beta tester.**

 **I've been considering making a section in the ANs that go into more detail about game mechanics and such, but I'm not completely sure about it, so I'll hold off on it for now.**

 **As of the writing of this AN, I have yet to write Chapter 1, but I plan to release it immediately after this prologue, maybe a day later at the latest. After that, no promises on the update schedule; I'm not sure how busy school will be for me this year, so my free time might vary quite a bit. I'd like to shoot for once a week, though.**

 **I want to just go on talking and talking about the ideas I have planned and where I'm going to go with this story, but I should leave the writing of the story for the part where the story actually goes, yeah? Anyways, that's all for now. Take care!**


	2. Chapter 1: Unforseen Consequences

**Sunday, November 6th, 2022, 12:50 P.M.**

At the end of the beta test, all the beta testers were given the opportunity to pre-purchase the game; since there would be a very limited number of copies on release, this was a godsend, and naturally Kazuto and I both bought the game immediately. Finally, the day for the official release had come, and the server would be opening at 1 P.M. I rushed to finish my lunch so that I could log on to SAO the second the game came online. Normally I didn't get so worked up about big releases—hell, SAO is probably the only game that I'd consistently played that wasn't at least a few years old—but it was hard to not get excited. I hadn't logged as many hours into the beta as Kazuto had… although, to be fair, that boy was insane; I don't think he was ever offline when I logged in. In any case, I was one of the top players, probably second only to Kazuto, despite it being the first major MMO that I had really ever played. I was hooked on the game, and I couldn't wait to be able to play again.

My mom grimaced when she saw how quickly I was eating. "Slow down a bit, Rei… it's not like your NerveGear's going anywhere. Besides, it'll probably make it harder to play if your stomach hurts."

I didn't respond immediately, as I was preoccupied with my food. "Give me a break, Mom… I just don't want to miss the launch."

"Ehhh, it's not like you to make such a big deal out of it."

I shrugged in response, and continued to eat my food, albeit a bit more slowly in order to appease my mother. Once I finished, I stood up, stating that I was going to go dive into the game.

"Have fun. Just be sure to come back downstairs by 6 to get something to eat."

"Yeah, I will."

As I ascended the stairs, I could overhear my little sister, Maki, complaining. "It's not fair… I want to play too." I could almost hear her pouting.

"Now, Maki-chan, we only have the one NerveGear for now. Besides, you're a bit too young to be playing something like Sword Art Online yet."

"Ehhhh!? I am too old enough!" She clearly wasn't too enthralled by our mother's response.

I chuckled softly as I went into my room. Maki had come to me more than once over summer break, begging me to let her try the beta out just once. Mom was right, though; she was too young for SAO, since the game was rated for 13 and older. Normally I wouldn't be too strict about age ratings to a certain extent, but FullDive games were a different story, since you were actually the player character yourself.

I checked my clock, which read 12:59 P.M., so I was just in time for the launch. I laid down on my bed and put on my NerveGear, and when the clock on the device's HUD changed to 1, I said "Link Start," sending myself into the gaming world. As usual, the device did its sensory checks, and once it was done I was greeted by a system prompt.

『Character data detected. Use current data?』

『Y/N』

I selected the 『Y』 option, knowing that it was referring to my character from the beta. Us testers had been informed that we would have the option of transferring our characters over to the full release. Of course, none of the stats would be transferred; however, our name, appearance, and some of the game settings would be, so it saved some time. As such, I didn't go through character creation, and instead was immediately sent to the main plaza of Starting City. There were already some other people logging in, but I just ignored them and made my way out to the fields just outside the city. As I was running, I moved the sheath for my dagger from my hip to my right arm, so that the grip was pointing down. I had messed around with the positioning during the beta, and I found that having it on my arm provided the easiest and fastest access. Fortunately, the game was kind enough to prevent the dagger from simply falling out of the sheath when it was upside-down.

I spent a couple hours grinding on the «Frenzy Boars» in the grasslands, which got me just over halfway to level 2. The boars, being the weakest monster in the game, didn't exactly give buckets of XP, and it didn't help that levelling in SAO took quite a long time compared to other games. I decided to take a break from fighting and head back to Starting City. I also had a few drops from the boars to sell; they were mostly just trash items, not worth holding onto and not worth much Cor either. As I was walking along the crowded streets, I was sorting through my inventory, and out of the various voices from all the conversations that people were having I could hear one specifically directed at me.

"Um, excuse me…"

Looking around, next to me I noticed a young boy standing around listlessly, looking completely lost. He had short, light-brown hair, and wore a light green shirt and khaki pants. His avatar looked no older than 12 or 13, and he was actually a centimeter or two shorter than me. I shot a questioning look at him, which got him to speak up.

"U-Uh, could you give me some help? I've never played a game like this before…"

I sighed slightly. I was planning on sending Kirito an instant message to tell him to meet up with me, since our friends lists were one of the things that didn't get transferred over, but if I helped this boy that would have to wait. I stood there in silence for a few seconds, unsure if I should help him or not. Eventually I decided that I might as well help him; Kirito was probably out grinding anyways, and it was possible that we would run into him out in the fields.

"Yeah, I guess… though, why did you ask me specifically?"

"Er, well… you just seemed really familiar with the game when you were walking by. Everyone else here is just kind of standing around…"

 _Fair enough._ "Alright. You should already have a starter weapon, right?"

The boy grinned and nodded vigorously. "Yep! I have a dagger, if that's okay. My name's Yi, by the way." His name appeared next to the cursor above his head shortly after he told it to me.

"A dagger, huh. That makes this a bit easier, at least. My name's Rei. I don't want to waste any time, so let's get going."

* * *

"You know, having a staring contest with the boar isn't really going to accomplish much."

Yi and the boar in question had been facing each other unmoving for the last 30 seconds or so. Well, 'unmoving' wasn't completely accurate; the boar had been pawing at the ground, and Yi looked like he was about to shake to pieces. He clearly wasn't going to go on the offensive… hopefully he would at least have enough sense to move once the boar charged.

The boar let out a high pitched squeal and began its attack, charging at Yi at full speed. As the boar got close to him, he jumped hard to his left, avoiding the boar's charge. He swung his dagger desperately at the boar as it passed by him, but doing so only sent him further off balance, resulting in him landing on his side rather than his feet.

"Jeez…" Shaking my head, I drew my dagger and ran at the boar, holding the short blade horizontally just above my right shoulder. The boar was still recovering from its charge; once I got near it, I stopped and shifted my posture slightly, activating the basic Dagger Sword Skill called «Slice». I leaned forwards, and the glowing dagger dug into the boar's right flank, taking about 35% of its HP. Afterwards, the post-motion delay held me in place for about a tenth of a second, after which I jumped backwards. Determining me to be the bigger threat, the boar turned around and faced me, preparing to charge again. I repeated the process twice more, killing the boar and receiving marginal Cor and XP for my trouble.

After sheathing my dagger, I turned to look at Yi, who had since picked himself up off of the ground. "Like I said before, just swinging your dagger around isn't going to do much. You have to wait for an opening and counter with a Sword Skill."

"It's so hard, though… and actually facing the monster is scary."

"No one said it would be easy. I get that actually fighting with your own body can be jarring at first, but you've got to get used to it. Hmm... Try practicing using «Slice» for a bit before fighting another boar. Having the pre-motion for the Skill memorized will help a lot."

"Okaay." Yi did as I instructed, and used the Sword Skill repeatedly, swinging at the air. After a while, he tried fighting another boar, with much more success. It still took him over twice as long as it did for me to kill it, but it was major progress nonetheless.

"Good job. Take a minute to rest. Once you're ready we'll keep fighting. You're going to have to pick up the pace, though, if you want to level up anytime soon."

"Understood, Rei-sensei!"

"...I'd really prefer it if you didn't call me that…" I sighed. Yi was a fast learner, but his personality was really wearisome, at least for me. I found it hard to deal with people that were always bouncy and energetic, with the exceptions of Kiko and my sister… Well, to be honest, I tended to dislike spending time with _anyone_ outside of my family and two friends for extended periods of time, but that didn't mean I wouldn't help someone that needed it. I glanced up at the clock in the corner of my vision, which to my dismay already read 5:29. _Well, good excuse to take a break, I guess._ "Crap, it's getting late… I should probably get going. I'll go back to Starting City before logging out." I turned around to start heading back to Starting City, but Yi stopped me before I could start walking.

"Wait! Um…" I turned around to look at him, and a small system window appeared in my vision. It was a friend request. I just stared at it for a few seconds; when I didn't immediately accept it, Yi hurried to explain. "Um, well… you were a really big help today… I just want to be able to repay you sometime…"

"Oh, I see… You really don't need to worry about it, it's not that big of a deal." I still didn't accept the request, which prompted a questioning look from him. I averted my gaze. "Er… it's just, I don't like adding people to my friends list unless I know them well…" Well, it was only sort of an excuse. Besides, I wasn't lying.

"Oh, okay…"

He looked kind of down about it, which made me feel bad. I waved my arms in front of me, trying to convince him to cheer up. "Uh, but don't be upset about it! It's still possible to contact other players without having them as a friend… Sorry, I really need to get going."

"Alright, I'll see you around sometime, I guess."

"...Yeah." I turned and started running back towards Starting City, waving at Yi as he retreated from my view. There were a few other players fighting the boars scattered around the fields; I made sure to avoid getting too close, so that I wouldn't get in the way of their fighting. Judging by their movements, most were new players; a lot of them were struggling to hit their adversaries, and were quite low on health. As I watched, one of the low-health players failed to dodge the charging boar and got hit straight in the gut, depleting the rest of his HP. I ignored the newbies and continued on my way to Starting City. As I neared the gate, however, I was engulfed in the signature light of a teleport effect, along with all the people around me. After the effect subsided, I found myself in the main plaza, surrounded by players.

 _It looks like almost all 10,000 people are here… a mass forced teleport? What could be going on?_ The players around me seemed just as confused as I was. After some time, I noticed a hexagonal red system window floating up in the air. The window rapidly multiplied, forming a red dome that enclosed the entire plaza. After that, a viscous, blood-like red liquid emerged from the gaps in the hexagonal red tiles, and formed into an oversized version of the robe that GMs wore. Oddly, there was no avatar inside; instead, it was like the robe itself was an avatar. Seeing the authoritative robe, the crowd quickly quietened down, and the GM took the opportunity to speak. His voice was amplified, to the point where it sounded less like someone was talking to me and more like his voice was put directly into my mind… although, with how the NerveGear worked, the latter was actually the case.

 **『** **Greetings, Players, and welcome to my world.** **』**

 _"My world"? Is this Kayaba? Just what the hell is going on?_

 **『** **As you have probably already noticed, the «Log Out» button is missing from the «Options» menu. Do not fret, as this is no bug. No, the lack of the option is actually a feature of Sword Art Online.** **』**

 _What!?_ I hadn't heard about that… I checked my menu, and sure enough, the 『Log Out』 option was grayed out. That... wouldn't accomplish much, thinking about it; players could be logged out forcefully by someone removing their NerveGear in the real world.

 **『** **As for forced removal of the NerveGear… should it be removed, the powerful electromagnetic transmitter within the NerveGear will have its limiter disabled, and it will release a high-energy pulse, effectively frying itself—and the user's brain.** **』**

 _… Is this some kind of joke?_

 **『** **Unfortunately, 213 players have already passed away. However, due to mass media coverage, there is no longer any threat of your NerveGears being removed.** **』**

To emphasize his point, windows displaying various media outlets appeared in the air around him. They reported various deaths, and one had a video feed of a house surrounded by police tape. It wasn't a joke at all.

 **『** **To be more specific, being disconnected from an Internet network for more than 2 hours, being without sufficient power for more than 10 minutes, or the NerveGear being tampered with in any way will trigger the pulse.** **』**

 **『** **Ah, before I go any further, I have a gift that I wish to give to all of you. Please, open your inventories.** **』**

Not having any real reason to not do so, everyone opened their menus, the characteristic chiming sound reverberating 10,000 times over. In my inventory, at the top of the list, was an item labelled «Hand Mirror». It was… a hand mirror; looking in it, I saw the reflection of my avatar. A moment later, however, I was engulfed in light similar to a teleport effect, as was everyone else in the plaza. Once the light subsided, I could see the mirror again, and the reflection looking back at me was… me. Not me as in my avatar; me as in _me_ , my real appearance. Looking around, everyone's appearance had changed… everyone got a bit shorter on average, and looked much more realistic, compared to the idealized avatars that they had made. Many of them had also changed genders, mostly to male. _He returned us to our real appearances… the NerveGear does have our appearances stored, thanks to the calibration we had to do while setting it up… but why?_

 **『** **So, to be able to log out, you must fulfill one condition: clear all 100 floors. Once the final boss in the «Ruby Palace» at the top of Aincrad has been cleared, all remaining players will immediately be logged out.** **』**

Upon hearing this, many in the crowd started yelling about how ridiculous that was; the beta testers got to Floor 10 in a month, so getting all the way to Floor 100 would take at least a year. Realistically, it would probably take much longer.

 **『** **There is one more thing... should you die within the game, you will no longer respawn. Instead, your name will be stricken through on the «Monument of Life» in the «Black Iron Palace» at the south edge of this plaza...** **』**

 _No respawning? With the way this is going, the only thing that could mean is..._

 **『** **and the NerveGear's transmitter will release the high-energy pulse, ending your life.** **』**

 **『** **You may be wondering, asking yourself why I would trap all of you here within the game. The answer is simple; this situation itself was my end goal. This is now your reality; you will live in Aincrad from here on out, until either the game is cleared or you die trying.** **』**

 **『** **With that, the tutorial for the official release of Sword Art Online has been concluded. Best of luck in your endeavors, players.** **』**

The robe avatar melted back into the dome formed by the system, and the dome itself receded shortly afterwards. After a few seconds of dead silence, all hell broke loose throughout the crowd, the cascade of shouting resonating throughout the plaza.

"THIS IS BULLSHIT!"

"What kind of twisted joke is this!? Let us out of here already! I have a meeting to go to!"

"No… I want to go home…"

Unable to stand the noise, I retreated from the crowd, heading down one of the narrow alleys branching off from the main road. Once I couldn't hear the crowd anymore, I stopped walking, and sunk down to the ground with my back against the wall. I opened my menu again, staring at the grayed out button that should have been able to let us log out of the game. I wasn't really sure _what_ to think. After sitting there for a few minutes, I realized that I had started crying.

"... Damn it…" I felt sick, which reminded me of my mother warning me that having a stomachache might make it hard to play. _What could be going on out there right now? How are Mom and Maki-chan reacting? Dad probably doesn't know yet… Kiko-chan must be freaking out…_ I continued to wonder about what had happened, not paying attention to how long I was sitting around.

A small chime pulled me out of my moping, and in the left side of my vision appeared a blinking orange icon. _A message?_ I tapped on the icon, and my eyes widened when I saw that the message was from Kirito.

「I'm at Horunka. The faster we can get stronger, the faster we can get out of here. I'll probably start heading to Tolbana tomorrow morning. It'll be faster to level up solo, but it's more dangerous too… we can party up in Tolbana if you want to. Don't die.」

 _He's in Horunka already?_ Looking up at my clock, it was almost 8 P.M. Two hours was enough time to get there, but that meant he left as soon as Kayaba's 'tutorial' ended. He had a point; the only way out of here was to get stronger and move upwards. Sitting around and worrying about dying wouldn't do anything for us. Travelling so late in the day would be a bit more dangerous; while there was enough moonlight to be able to fight by, it was still fairly dark. Stronger monsters also tended to spawn during nighttime, but the road to Horunka wouldn't have anything I couldn't handle. Deciding that it would be better to leave now instead of waiting for morning, I stood up and made my way to the gate to exit the city.

The dagger sheathed on my right arm had never felt as heavy as it did then.

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 **Hey! Hopefully you've been enjoying this so far! I keep worrying and worrying about the quality of the prologue and this first chapter, but I think I just need to get it out there and keep on trucking. I'll get more comfortable with some time.**

 **The next few chapters are going to be both fun and a challenge to write; the impact of the situation hasn't really completely sunk in for everyone yet, and it's going to affect characters in different ways. It sort of feels like I'm putting the hard part off so my future self can deal with it… I've found that writing a realistic reaction is** _ **hard.**_ **Mostly because I have no clue how I'd react. I don't think I'm the kind of person that would freak out in that situation… I'd probably just go "oh, ok" at first and start making my way out. The breakdown would probably come later. It's impossible to really know, though; it's not like I've been in such a life-or-death situation before.**

 **With Kayaba's speech… I just kinda winged it. Didn't feel like looking it up in the book or anime to see what he said word-for-word, so I just tried to get the point across. Not like it's anything new anyways. Another thing: the proper name for SAO's currency is Cor. I've seen it spelled as Col a lot as well, but there's a specific reason for spelling it Cor: Aincrad is short for "An Incarnating Radius," (which somewhat alludes to Kayaba's true intentions for the game); Cor stands for "Coin of Radius," so it's quite literally the coin of Aincrad.**

 **That's all from me for now. Take care!**


	3. Chapter 2: Big Bad Wolf

**Monday, November 7th, 2022, 8:30 A.M.**

I groggily sat up, forced awake by the alarm I set going off inside my head. I sat there in bed for a while, looking around my small room in Horunka's inn. _I'm still here… well, if there was any doubt before, it's gone now._ Sighing, I got out of bed, and opened my inventory to re-equip my gear. After getting annoyed with the messy state of my inventory, I left my room and went down to the first floor of the inn.

To my surprise, there was someone else sitting at the bar. I hadn't expected many other people to have already left Starting City, let alone be this far out. There was no doubt that the person was a beta tester, but that was all I could tell; they were wearing a brown cloak that concealed all of their features. I left the person alone and made my way to the door; I didn't have any reason to speak to them, nor did they seem very interested in speaking.

"'Scuse me!"

… _Or not._ The person's voice was nasally, and obviously feminine, which I definitely wasn't expecting. Turning to face the girl, I still wasn't able to get a good look at them, as her hood obscured a good portion of their face. However, all I needed to see was her cheeks: three marks on either one, like whiskers.

"... Argo? That you?" Argo was an info broker in the beta test, and I was somewhat friendly with her. I felt like I didn't have to worry as much over what I said to her, probably because she was fairly indifferent most of the time. I never fully understood why she decided to be an info broker of all things during the test, but she did it well; I think there were a couple Skills that pertained to it, as well. She'd be extremely important from now on, too; spending some Cor on the details of a monster or a quest would be a lot more desirable now that it meant life or death.

"Yep. Guessing you're Rei-chan, judging by your voice. Plus, ya don't look much different."

I shrugged. "Yeah…" I quickly sent Argo a friend request before sitting down next to her. "So, um… what's it like back in Starting City right now? After… that, I moped around in a side street for a few hours before getting out of there… I imagine it's chaos." To be honest, I couldn't care less about what everyone back there was doing right now, plus I didn't want to remind myself about what had happened, but I felt like I needed to ask.

She just gave me a look. Rolling my eyes, I opened my inventory and materialized a 50 Cor piece, flipping it at her. She caught it deftly between her fingers before speaking. "Last night it was a madhouse, yeah. Though it was quieter than a mouse this morning, which really was more unsettling."

I looked down at the bar, silent. The situation hadn't completely sunk in for me.

"Ah, right. Kii-bou was asking me earlier if I'd seen you yet…"

My head snapped up. "Really? Has he left Horunka already?"

She blinked, not expecting my sudden response. "Eh, yeah. Left about… hour and a half ago. Knowing him, he's probably most of the way to Tolbana already."

"... Figures… Though, I've never known him to be up so early."

Argo gave an interested hum, but didn't say anything else, so it was silent for a few moments.

"… Er, I should probably get going too… I'll have to grind a bit before heading to Tolbana." I stood up and started making my way towards the door.

"By the way, if you come across anything that's changed from the beta, no matter how small, PM me as soon as you can. Prior experience is gonna make people lazy and complacent, and it'll get a lot of betas killed."

"... Yeah, I will." I nodded somberly, and headed out the door.

* * *

I spent about an hour grinding the «Dire Wolves» that populated the fields around Horunka, which got me a bit past level 2. The wolves, like the boars, had fairly simple attack patterns, and I had little issue fighting them. Upon levelling, I received 3 stat points, all of which I put into Agility. Immediately, I saw my HP go up slightly, and I felt a little lighter on my feet. There were only two stats that could be increased—Agility and Strength. They were both fairly self-explanatory; Agility made you faster, Strength made you stronger. Both increased your HP and your inventory's carrying capacity, but Strength granted more of an increase than Agility. Since I used a dagger, my build would be high in Agility.

I returned to the town to sell off any drops I didn't need. The wolves occasionally dropped «Wolf Fangs», which would be useful in upgrading my daggers later on, but everything else was vendor trash to me. After selling off everything, I made my way to the weapon shop to buy a backup dagger. The shop only sold «Bronze» weapons, which did slightly more damage than the starter weapons, but had less durability. They were also very vulnerable to corrosive attacks, which was alarmingly unsafe, considering the town's proximity to «Little Nepents», which used said attacks.

Fortunately for me, I wouldn't be fighting any of the vicious plant monsters, so the corrosive weakness wouldn't be a problem. My starter dagger was starting to wear out, but hopefully it would last until Tolbana, which had a quest that gave a decent dagger that would last until the third floor or so. After buying a dagger, I went to buy a few potions before making my way out of Horunka. If I was lucky, I wouldn't have to do much fighting; the monsters around Tolbana were around level 3 or 4, so fighting them would be risky. On top of that, there was a small chance for a stronger version of the wolves I had been fighting to spawn, called an «Alpha Dire Wolf».

… _Come to think of it, I never equipped a Skill in the second starting slot._ As I was walking, I opened my menu and navigated to the blank slot in question. After some deliberation, I decided to equip the «Sprint» skill. It enabled the «System Assist» to push the player to higher speeds, and levelled by, well, running around a lot. Having a high «Sprint» level would make travelling a lot faster, as well as escaping from danger much easier. «Searching» would be extremely useful as well, but I decided to get that later, since it wasn't really necessary for most of the first floor.

I started running, the system pushing me a bit faster than I had been able to run before. At level 1, it wouldn't be much of an increase, but it was still noticeable. Up ahead, the sides of the road looked oddly clear of any wolves, which meant one of two things: either someone had fought them recently and the wolves hadn't repopped yet, or there was an alpha nearby. I doubted that it was the former, because the player that killed them would probably still be in sight if that was the case.

As if on cue, an «Alpha Dire Wolf» jumped out into the road in front of me. I had forgotten just how big the alphas were—the beast was about a meter tall at the shoulder. I skidded to a stop and dropped into a defensive stance while I drew my dagger. The wolf charged at me and lunged, reaching out its claws; I stepped to the right and pulled my dagger across its side. Since I hadn't used a Sword Skill and the cut was shallow, it did minimal damage, barely denting the thing's health bar. It quickly turned around and lunged at me again, and again I dodged, but it nicked my arm with its claws, taking about 5% of my HP. While it didn't sting like an actual cut, there was some dull pain, certainly more than there was in the beta.

Ignoring the pain from my arm, I held my dagger next to my side, the point facing forwards. The wolf took a bit longer to recover from its second attack, and I activated the Sword Skill «Lunge». I jumped forwards and stabbed the glowing blade into its main weak spot, the neck. By landing a critical hit, my attack took a good third out of its health, and it turned its head and snapped at my hand. I was frozen in place due to the skill, but fortunately I was just out of its reach.

As soon as the post-motion delay wore off, I jumped backwards out of the immediate range of the wolf. Once again, the wolf charged at me, and I readied myself to move out of the way. However, instead of lunging at me like it had before, the wolf jumped. And it jumped _high_ ; it was easily three meters in the air. This new attack took me by surprise, and I realized far too late that the arc of its jump led straight to my head. I moved to the side at the last moment, which saved me from being pinned down, but I still got a nasty swipe to the face. Despite the system blocking most of the pain, it still stung a bit, probably due to its claws, and made me somewhat dizzy. After shaking off the dizziness from the hit, I turned around to find the wolf picking itself up off the ground; since it had swung its paw at my head, it was unable to land properly. I took the opportunity and activated «Lunge» again, hitting the wolf's neck and taking another third of its health.

I quickly backed off to wait for the wolf to attack again. It approached more slowly this time while growling. Since I had just used the same Sword Skill twice in a row, I decided that it would be best for me to use a different Skill, to throw off its AI. Once the wolf got to only a few meters away, it started running. It snapped at my side as it ran past me, but I stepped out of the way and activated «Slice», pushing along with the Skill as it dug along the wolf, taking about 25% of its health. It quickly spun around to attack again, but I was faster, stabbing it directly in the face without even using a Skill. The stab was enough to deplete the rest of its HP, and the giant wolf shattered into light blue shards.

Once the wolf was dead, a small result popup appeared in front of me. I got a good chunk of XP and Cor for killing the wolf, getting me up to about a third of the way to level 3 and mostly making up for what I spent on my backup dagger and potions. I also got a couple «Wolf Fangs», as well as a «Long Alpha Claw», which I had never seen before. I closed the results screen, and nearly fell over when I saw my HP.

It was at around 55%, almost in the yellow zone. That one hit from the wolf's jump attack took almost 40% of my health. I immediately opened up my inventory and got out a potion, drinking it down while grimacing at the nasty taste. The potion would get me back to near full health across a couple minutes.

 _I need to tell Argo about that attack as soon as I can…_ I'd never seen or heard of that jumping attack during the beta. Moving out of the way like I did earned me that smack to the face; had I not moved, it probably would've been less damaging, but I would be pinned under the wolf. Fortunately, the normal «Dire Wolves» didn't seem to have the attack, but I certainly wouldn't be the only one to encounter an alpha wolf. It would be dangerous to take the time to send a message out in the middle of the field, so I started back on my way to Tolbana, running as fast as I could.

* * *

Fortunately, I only encountered a couple normal «Dire Wolves» for the rest of the trip to Tolbana. As soon as I got within the city, I started writing a message to Argo.

「I've got some new info. I came across an «Alpha Dire Wolf» soon after I left Horunka, and it had a new attack that I've never seen before. It charged like it normally does, but instead of lunging, it jumped about 3 meters into the air, aiming straight for my head. It would've pinned me down, but I moved out of the way at the last second. Instead, I got hit in the face by a strong swipe from its paw, and it took about 40% of my HP. The attack probably wouldn't be too hard to avoid if you were prepared for it, but at a low level and with a build like mine, it's seriously dangerous.

Also, I got a «Long Alpha Claw» from it as a drop. Any idea what that does?」

After looking over the message once I was finished, I sent it to Argo. I got a reply almost immediately.

「K. Thanks for that, that jump attack sounds really dangerous. I'll look into the claw, but my first guess is it's used as a special crafting material. Don't worry about paying for that—consider it even with what you told me.」

With that done, I closed my menu and started walking around Tolbana. I looked at my clock, and it was about 1:30. At this point, I realized I hadn't eaten anything for a whole day, and immediately I could feel the pain in my stomach. I rushed to find the bakery, and bought a couple pieces of the cheap black bread that they sold. It was dry and bland, but it was better than starving—at least, virtually.

 _Come to think of it... what about our bodies in the real world?… We'd probably have to be moved to hospitals. Maybe that's what the two-hour connection grace period was for…_ I shook my head, trying to get the thoughts of the real world out. Worrying wouldn't do me any good; I had to just keep going forward.

I made my way over to the main square and sat down on one of the benches. Tolbana was completely devoid of life save for me and the NPCs, from what I had seen. It wasn't surprising; most people were still 9 or so kilometers back, and anyone who had made it up here would probably be out grinding at this time of day. I wasn't really in the mood to do any grinding after my trip here, so I just wandered around for a while.

After a few minutes, I got a message back from Argo about the claw that I had gotten. According to one of the NPCs in Horunka, large wolf claws were quite strong, and were a suitable material to make a weapon out of. There wasn't any indication to how skilled a smith would have to be or if there were any specific requirements, but it couldn't be too difficult, considering that it was a drop from the first floor.

I closed the message and made my way to the NPC blacksmith's building located near the main square. If the NPC couldn't handle it, maybe a player smith would be able to once some showed up. Just before I went in the shop, though, another player rounded the corner of the building.

"Huh… oh, Rei. Argo told me you were headed here."

I whirled to my left, my vision greeted by the unmistakable feminine face and black eyes and hair. My eyes widened in surprise. "Ka… Kazu…" Upon seeing him, I buried my face in his chest and bawled my eyes out. So far I'd tried to avoid getting worked up over our situation, but seeing my friend in front of me made it too hard to bear; he reminded me of the real world, and in turn the fact that we couldn't go back to it.

Kirito was at a loss for what to do at first, but he rubbed my back and did his best to comfort me. After a few minutes, I managed to calm down. "S-Sorry… I just…"

"It's fine. Feeling a bit better now?"

I took a second to breathe to still my nerves. "Yeah…" We sat down on a nearby bench, neither of us saying anything for a little while. Eventually, I spoke up, trying to distract myself. "Um, why are you in town, anyways? I figured you'd be out grinding or something."

"Oh, right… Actually, I came back to get something to eat, I kinda forgot to bring anything with me..." He sheepishly rubbed the back of his head.

I rolled my eyes and took a piece of bread out of my inventory. "Of course you did. Here."

Kazuto thanked me for the bread and scarfed it down, grimacing at the dry blandness. "Bleh. We should really do that quest for the cream… Anyways, what're you at the blacksmith for? I thought the dagger from that quest would be better than anything here."

"Oh, well, I got a drop from an «Alpha Dire Wolf» on the way here…" I pulled the claw out of my inventory to take a look at it. It was extremely long, even for a wolf of the alpha's size; it was possible that a dagger made with it would have the claw as the blade itself. It was a yellowish off-white, and was fairly straight until the last few centimeters, where it curved downwards slightly before tapering to a point. "According to Argo, an NPC said it could be made into a dagger if it was handled properly."

"Hmm…" Kirito examined the claw. "Well, it's not metal, but it's not like we've ever come across it before. Still, it's kind of hard to match good quest items this early… Plus, the alpha wolves aren't too dangerous, compared to the monsters around Tolbana and in the labyrinth."

I grimaced when he said that. "Yeah, about that… It has a new attack, at least one that it never used before."

Kirito gave me a confused look, so I continued. "It charges like with its lunge attack, but instead of lunging it jumps high into the air, about three meters. I got out of the way at the last second, but I still took a nasty hit to the face… It took about 40% of my HP."

"40!? What level are you?"

"Er, Level 2, so along with my build, the damage I took was probably higher than most players would, plus it was a clean hit to the head… still, that wasn't even the full attack. It would've pinned me down if I hadn't moved." I shuddered, realizing how close I actually came to dying. That wolf definitely had a higher Strength stat than me...

"Did you tell Argo?"

"Well, yeah…" I wanted to get away from the topic of my near-death experience as fast as I could. "Let's go see if the NPC blacksmith can do anything with this claw." We got up and walked into the blacksmith shop. It was fairly basic; in front of us was a counter where the NPC stood, with an anvil, furnace, and other smithing workstations behind him. There were a few weapons hung up on the walls, and display cases lined up under them.

The NPC smith chirped a generic greeting. "Welcome! What can I do for you today?"

I walked up to the counter and held the wolf claw in front of me, choosing my words carefully so that the system would understand. "Can you make a weapon with this?"

The NPC looked at the claw for a moment, before exclaiming in recognition. "Ah! I've seen a claw like this once before. You must have gone to some length to get it. Unfortunately, I don't have the knowledge or the skill to make use of this… however, I know of someone who does."

"Who would that be?"

"Her name is Lynda. She lives on the western edge of the city… She's a very skilled smith, but she hasn't practiced the trade in quite some time. Even so, she's much more likely to be able to use this than me." A quest update notification appeared on the left of my vision.

"... I see. Thank you very much." I bowed slightly to the NPC smith and exited the shop, Kirito trailing behind me. "... Well, that's weird."

"Why?"

I opened my menu and navigated to the «Quests» submenu. There was one active quest: «Secret of the Lunar Cave». "Because Lynda is the NPC that gives the quest that has the «Lunar Dagger» as the reward… and this is the same quest."

"Huh. I guess… the claw is a new requirement to complete the quest?"

I shook my head. "I don't see why. The quest is about getting a special ore… although, I guess a wolf claw fits the theme… Did you get the quest?"

"Nope."

"Oh well. If you want the XP, you can start it by talking to Lynda… at least, you could in the beta. For all we know, this claw could be a new starting flag for the quest."

Kirito shrugged. "Well, let's go find out."

"Alright." I invited Kirito to a party, and sent him a friend request as well, since I hadn't yet. Once he had accepted them, we started heading for the west edge of Tolbana.

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 **Hey there! Thanks for taking the time to read my story! So, first off: I put the chapter title at the top of the chapter for both the Prologue and Chapter 1, but I'm going to remove that; the title is already displayed in chapter selection menu (and said menu makes the first line of text not centered with the rest of the chapter, which irks me to no end), and the mobile version of the site displays the chapter title at the top as well. I like the way it looks with it being centered at the top of the story and all, but the function is already built into the site, so no need to be redundant. Speaking of the chapter title, I had a hard time thinking of one that wasn't a horrible pun. Thankfully, I managed to avoid something too facepalm-y, but… meh.**

 **Also, a thing: System Assist is a major function of the SAO system that, well, assists with all functions that one would not be able to do normally, such as Sword Skills, Sprinting, and various other Skills; in other words, it works to speed up players' movements. This doesn't mean, however, that Sword Skills are set in stone; as was already demonstrated, with sufficient skill it's possible to manipulate them. Moving with the Skill will speed it up, moving against it will slow it down (and end it prematurely), the angle and direction of the Skill can be altered somewhat, etc.**

 **Can't think of anything else, so that's all for now. Take care!**

 **P.S. Wow, okay, somehow I put 23rd instead of 7th in the date up at the top of the chapter. Fixed that.**


	4. Chapter 3: Glowing Stones

**Monday, November 7th, 2022, 2 P.M.**

"Alright, here's the cave."

Earlier, Kirito and I had visited the NPC Linda at her house near the west edge of Tolbana. Kirito was able to take the quest as well; the only new thing was a few new lines of dialogue about the wolf claw once I showed it to her.

"Anything specific I should know about?"

I shook my head. "Not much, it was a pretty simple quest in the beta. There was a puzzle partway through the cave, so that might have changed… I don't remember the monsters being too threatening. Definitely nothing we can't handle." I started heading into the cave as I spoke.

"Ah, w-wait… don't we need a torch or something?"

"Nope. There's a reason it's called the Lunar Cave." As we walked further into the cave, the sunlight from outside fell away, revealing what I had meant. A soft blue glow enveloped the whole cave, almost like moonlight. There were glowing blue spots and veins running through the cave walls and formations, which was the source of the light. It wasn't much, but it was enough to walk and fight by, meaning we didn't need to carry a torch.

"Woah…"

"Yeah, it's pretty amazing. There shouldn't be any monsters for the first part of the cave."

"Okay. We should still stay on guard… it wouldn't be the first thing that's changed."

We walked in relative silence, admiring the beauty of the softly-lit cave. It was fairly large; there was enough space for 4 or so people to walk side-by-side and plenty of headroom. After a few minutes, we came to a large cavern, with brighter lighting than we had seen so far. On our right was a small lake, with some stalactites hanging above. However, my interest was focused on what was to our left: an organized collection of small stalagmites, each of which had a glowing stone at the top.

"Is this the puzzle you mentioned?"

"Yeah, but it's definitely different than from it was before. In the beta, you just had to tap the stalagmites in a certain order, honestly it could hardly be called a puzzle… there's too many here for something like that." They were arranged in a semicircle, and there were around 25 in total.

"Huh…" Kirito walked up to the stalagmites and tapped the stone on top of one of them, and it let out a soft chime. "Did they do that before?"

"No…" I tapped a few of the other stones, each of which produced a chime different in pitch, based on their position in the semicircle. "Sounds like they're laid out like a piano… yeah, the accidentals are a bit darker in color too. The notes we need are probably hidden in this cavern somewhere."

"But… where? They'd be pretty visible if they were carved into the walls or something."

"I dunno… maybe it could be hidden in the floor, the surface of it is pretty varied… or it could be something to do with the lake." I turned to look at the water in question behind me. The blue glow that permeated the cavern combined with the water's clearness made it look crystalline.

Kirito walked up to the shimmering water and looked into it, trying to see the bottom. "It looks kind of deep, but there's no current, so swimming in it wouldn't be too bad."

I shuffled my feet uncomfortably. "Yeah, sure…" I looked up at the stalactites hanging above the lake, searching for any hints hidden in them. "I don't see any pattern in the stalactites… I'll take a look around up here to make sure we didn't miss anything, so if you really want to you can dive into the lake. I'm sure you remember how dangerous swimming was, though..."

"... Well, yeah… Alright, I'll jump in. I don't see any fish or anything in there, so it should be safe enough… probably." He opened his menu and started unequipping any unnecessary gear.

I rolled my eyes and turned around, walking away from the lake and towards the nearest wall. I scanned carefully up and down the wall, slowly walking along; after a few moments I heard a splash from behind me, which was presumably Kirito jumping into the lake. I continued walking along the wall, but I didn't find anything that looked like notes or any kind of hint. _Maybe there was something somewhere along the path we came down…_

I heard another splash from behind me, and turning around I saw a soaked Kirito at the surface of the water, holding a small stone tablet. His HP was in the yellow, around 40%.

"You idiot…"

"Hey, I'm not dead. Besides, I found this." He got out of the lake and handed me the tablet, before putting his gear back on.

The stone tablet had a music staff carved into it, containing the key signature and only one measure of six notes.. "D Major… Was this the only thing down there? Also, drink a potion already."

"From what I could tell, yeah." He opened his inventory and pulled out a health potion, which he quickly drank.

"Huh… I was thinking that maybe we passed something on our way through the cave here, because it seems kind of extreme for the solution to be at the bottom of the lake. Well, I'll try this, I guess." I walked up to the stalagmites and took another look at the tablet in my hand. "So… D-A, then D-A-B-D." I tapped the corresponding stones, and shortly after doing so, I heard the sound of rock scraping against rock to our right.

"Ah, a doorway. Well, let's go." Kirito quickly made his way through the new opening, and I rushed to catch up, putting the tablet in my inventory.

"To be honest, I feel like being able to read sheet music is kind of a steep requirement for a quest, especially one this early… even if it was so simple."

Kirito shrugged. "Eh, that's an RPG for you. Besides, there's bound to be someone in the game that's able to do it…" He gave me a pointed look.

"Yeah, yeah… There is the «Musical Instrument» skill too… Plus, I guess people could always go back and ask the quest NPC."

Kirito nodded. "Anyways, we should be on our guard now. You said that monsters start appearing after this point, right?"

"Uh-huh. They blend in with the walls, plus it's darker in here than it was in the first part of the cave, so they can be hard to spot. They're called «Stone Gremlins»." We proceeded to walk in silence for a while, expecting one of the gremlins to jump out from the shadows and attack us. However, no attack came.

"Er… are you sure there were monsters here?"

"Yes, completely sure. If they aren't here now, there might be a miniboss or something instead."

"I hope it isn't too hard—wait, is this a dead end?"

Sure enough, the path just ended, a solid wall of rock in front of us. Unlike the rest of the cave, there were no blue glowing veins running through it. "Well, um, crap. What now?"

"I don't remember seeing any other pathways… maybe it's another door?"

"But, there's nothing else here…" I took another look at the wall in front of us; a roughly rectangular section of it was indented. "Oh, maybe…" I took the stone tablet from the lake out from my inventory and pressed it into the wall. After taking my hand away from it, the wall rose up into the ceiling, revealing a large, circular room, well-lit by the same glowing veins that were spread throughout the cave.

"So, uh… miniboss?"

I sighed. "Yeah, probably. My first guess is a bigger version of the old mobs…" We cautiously walked into the room, scanning the edges to watch for anything that might jump out. The room was absolutely empty. "It's so much brighter in here, and I don't see another doorway, so where—" The ground started violently shaking, and the center of the floor started raising up. It kept rising, slowly unfurling into a somewhat humanoid shape that stood about 8 meters tall. A red cursor appeared above its head, along with two health bars and its name: «Lunite Golem». True to its name, it was a stone golem made mostly of the blue glowing ore that we had been seeing throughout the cave.

I backed up slightly, putting Kirito in front of me; he could handle aggro better than I could. "Any ideas?"

"Well, let's just watch it first. We didn't come across any golems in the beta, but it'll probably be slow and heavy-hitting." He started inching forward, quickly drawing the aggro of the golem. It stomped towards us and pulled back its arm, winding up for a swing. It was a long wind-up, so the attack would be pretty heavy; Kirito and I both jumped backwards as it swung towards us. The golem's fist impacted the ground, sending a tremor throughout the room. It lingered there for a few moments, so Kirito rushed forwards and attacked it without using a Sword Skill. Unsurprisingly, it did very little damage.

We kept the same pattern for a while; all the golem ever did was the same slow attack, so I started attacking as well. We both used Sword Skills, as we wouldn't need to worry about any counterattacks during our post-motion delay. Soon, though, we encountered a problem.

"Jeez, this thing is barely taking any damage…"

Kirito and I dodged another swing, and we both attacked again. "Well, it is made of stone… my sword and your dagger aren't exactly the best weapons for dealing with it."

I sighed. "Yeah, I guess—wait, what is it doing?" The golem had retreated towards the center of the cave and curled up into a ball.

"Well, we just reached half of its first health bar, so maybe that triggered something…"

We stood there and watched the golem for a moment, but it made no effort to move at all, so we slowly started moving closer. I took another look at its health bar—

"It's regenerating!" Kirito dashed forwards and swung at it with a «Horizontal», but it bounced off with a spray of purple sparks and a system message.

"I-It's invulnerable…? But then, how…" The golem had reached full health again, and unfurled itself. Kirito and I quickly backed away from it, and it resumed its sluggish assault, slightly faster this time. As we were backing away, I nearly slipped on a small chunk of rock that was lying on the ground.

 _Wait… there was definitely no loose rock on the floor earlier._ I looked down at the rock underneath my foot, and found that it had a blue glow, identical in brightness to rock that made up the golem. I picked up the small stone and tapped on it, and a small system window with a name popped up—«Small Lunite Chunk». I looked back up at the golem, focusing on its arm; the spots where we had attacked it had a few pieces of rock missing.

"Oi, Kaz—er, Kirito. Attack it with the strongest Skill you can, I'm going to hang back and watch for a second."

"Er, okay." Kirito looked a little confused, but didn't question me. After the golem did its usual attack, he dashed forwards and used another «Horizontal», putting all the force behind it that he could. When the attack connected, I could see a few chunks of rock fly out from where he had hit.

"That's it! We don't need to kill the golem at all!"

"Haah?" Kirito wasn't buying it.

"Look, our attacks have been knocking off small pieces of the ore that we need. If we can get a big enough piece, that should fulfill the quest requirement." I looked at my Quest menu, and the only text displayed for the quest was 『Collect a piece of «Lunite Ore.»』 It didn't say anything about defeating the golem.

"Okay, but how do we get out of here? The door closed behind us."

"Uh, we'll… figure that out." We dodged yet another attack; this time, I focused on hitting the wrist of golem, hoping to cut its whole hand off. My first attack wasn't successful, but a few more hits would do it. Kirito caught on, and for the next few attacks we worked at cutting off the golem's hand. Eventually, we succeeded, and the golem retreated back to the center of the room.

I tapped on the severed hand, and sure enough it was called «Lunite Ore». I wasn't able to put it into my inventory, and it was too heavy to hold with one hand, so I had to sheathe my dagger to be able to carry it.

"Okay, so, now what?"

"Um… maybe the door will open now?" I walked up to said door, but it didn't budge. I tried pressing the ore up against it, but that didn't do anything either. "Crap." Heavy footsteps from behind me told me that the golem was coming towards us again.

"It's attacking, and fast!" After shouting that, Kirito ran along the wall, pulling me with him. Moments later, the golem's non-severed hand slammed into the wall, right where we were standing. To our surprise, when it pulled its fist back, the door was open.

"Well, I guess we can leave now."

* * *

"My, that is quite a large piece of ore."

We had returned to Linda's house in Tolbana after escaping from the golem. It was fairly obvious why she didn't practice her smithing much anymore; she was quite old, probably at least 65 or 70 years old. We were currently standing in a small workshop in the basement of her house.

"Hand it to me, if you would. The wolf's claw as well. I could easily make a few extra ingots using this, if you would like to take them with you."

I bowed politely to the woman after handing her the materials. "That would be wonderful." Interacting with NPCs could be a bit stiff at times, but I found that they had become able to understand more complex sentences than in the beta. She walked over to her furnace and placed both the ore and the wolf claw inside. After some time, she pulled out four red-hot ingots using a pair of tongs, and placed one of them on her anvil.

"This metal is quite strong, but I'm afraid I can't forge any large weapons from it… the best I can make is a dagger."

"A dagger is perfect, actually."

Linda nodded and started hitting the still-glowing ingot with her hammer. Smithing in SAO wasn't exactly realistic; throwing some ore in a furnace and hitting it with a hammer once it was in ingot form was about all there was to it. You could choose what type of weapon got made—and obviously what material it was made of—but beyond that no one had figured out how to influence how the weapon was made.

After a few minutes and quite a few hits, the ingot started glowing similarly to a Sword Skill and changed into a shape of a dagger. Linda picked up the dagger, examining it closely. After giving a satisfied nod, she handed it to me. "There you are. I don't ask of any payment from you, but if you don't mind, could you tell me if there was anything peculiar in the cave?"

"Well… there was a large cavern with a lake and some stalagmites that produced musical notes if you tapped them… the right notes made a secret door open. That pathway led to another cavern that had a huge animated stone golem, made completely out of that ore. We weren't able to defeat it, but the ore we gave you was actually from the golem's right hand."

It was quite a lot for the system to work through, but Linda understood without any problem. "A golem… I see." She walked over to the other ingots that she had made, which had since cooled off. They gave off a similar glow to the ore that they were made from. She picked the three of them up and handed them to Kirito. "Here you go. I doubt I will have any other use for them… perhaps you will find someone more skilled than I to shape them."

I bowed again. "Thank you. If you don't mind, we'll be leaving now."

Linda smiled. "Take care."

I turned and walked up the stairs, Kirito following behind me. Once we exited the house, we received a quest completion popup.

『Quest Completed: «Secret of the Lunar Cave»

Bonus criteria fulfilled!

Rewards:

5000 XP

«Wolfswipe»』

5000 was enough experience to put me halfway past level 3; it was higher than average for a reward for the first floor, plus I was probably slightly underleveled for the quest. The "bonus criteria" was probably that «Long Alpha Claw» that I had. «Wolfswipe» was presumably the name of my new dagger; Kirito would have the ingots listed as a reward instead.

"3 «Wolfmoon Ingots»… I guess the name makes sense, since it was made using «Lunar Ore» and the claw from a wolf… What are the stats on that dagger?"

I looked down at the dagger I was holding. Its design was fairly simple; the blade was about 30 centimeters long and 3 centimeters wide, and had a shallow fuller running down most of the blade. One edge of the blade was roughly serrated, while the other was smooth. The crossguard extended about a centimeter on either side of the blade, and was completely straight save for a small curl towards the point of the dagger at each end. The grip was just long enough to fit my hand, and was made out of a material that looked similar to the wolf claw that was put into the ingot. The pommel was a simple small sphere placed on the end of the grip.

After examining the dagger for a moment, I tapped on the blade to bring up its stat window. "...Woah, really?"

"What?"

"Well, look for yourself." I tapped on the window to bring up its local setting menu, and set it to be visible to all players.

『Wolfswipe

Dagger - Wolfmoon

Damage: 20-30

Weight: 0.5

Durability: 500/500

Upgrade Attempts: 10/10

Upgrades: N/A

Min. Level: 4

Min. Agility/Strength: 10/3

+1 to Agility

 _Many talk of bark and bite—but none talk of a wolf's swipe, as none live to tell the tale._ 』

"What… that's better than the «Anneal Blade», and it even has a stat boost!"

"Even the damage? That's really weird, daggers don't usually match swords in damage…" I looked at the stats again, noticing that I didn't meet the level requirement to equip the dagger. "What's the level requirement for your sword?"

"Level 3… even then, higher damage is weird, never mind the Agility boost."

I looked up at my clock, and found it to be 4:30 P.M. Two-and-a-half hours wasn't too bad, considering that the quest had been completely reworked. "... I think I'm done for today. Between the wolf and the golem, I'm not exactly eager to do any more fighting. I'll try to get to level 4 tomorrow." We started heading towards the center of town.

"Alright. Are you going to rent an inn room?"

"Actually… Have you rented the second floor of that farmhouse yet?"

"No, I haven't gotten around to it."

"We could share it if you want. I don't remember the inn rooms here being very comfortable."

That got the exact reaction I expected. "U-Um, well, er…"

"Oh, calm down. Dibs on the bed, by the way. You get the sofa."

"Ehh!?" He gave me a pathetic look.

"Fine, we can switch on different days. The rent is 80 Cor a night, right?"

"Y-Yeah… and we can pay for 10 days' worth at a time."

"Alright, so how about the first one there doesn't have to pay for the first 10 days?" I grinned and starting running full-speed towards the east side of Tolbana.

"W-What!? But, your Agility is higher!" Kirito struggled to chase after me, his late start and lower Agility guaranteeing that I would be 800 Cor richer… not that it was much money to begin with.

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 **Hey! Huge thanks to those that have followed and favorited so far.**

 **So, first off: Apologies for the longer wait for this chapter. I had an essay to write for my Composition class last week, and it kind of drained me of most of my writing willpower. Plus, I spent a lot of my free time playing Guitar Hero and building a couple M:TG decks. Speaking of which, I'm doing a Conspiracy draft tomorrow and am also going to the Kaladesh prerelease on Saturday, so that's going to eat up a good chunk of my free time for the rest of this week. I also need to decide exactly what I want to do with the next chapter, so it'll likely be more than a week's wait again.**

 **One thing that's been bugging me a bit is that I'm not sure if the level of detail in my writing is at a good spot; maybe it's fine, but I feel like there could be more. Honestly, I'm probably just being too hard on myself... it seems much more noticeable when I'm writing compared to when I'm reading someone else's work. Well, we'll see. On a related note, here's the layout for the info window of weapons, if you're curious:**

 **『** **Name**

 **Weapon Type - Material/(s)**

 **Damage: x-y**

 **Weight: w (in kg)**

 **Durability: d/d**

 **Upgrade Attempts: u/u**

 **Upgrades: n**

 **Min. Level: m**

 **Min. Agility/Strength: a/s**

 **Bonus Stats**

 _ **Description/quote/flavor text/other**_

 **Smith (if by Player & with sufficient Appraisal skill)** **』**

 **Don't expect to see it much; I only have one other instance of it being used planned currently, partially because that weapon might have a special property… I feel that going into too much detail with stats is kind of unnecessary, especially with damage numbers. Said numbers become kind of useless when there's a realistic force component to consider; a weapon's going to do way less than its listed damage if you barely poke someone with it, and way more if you have a lot of force behind it. I just wanted to show off this weapon a bit, and I feel that its somewhat unique source justifies it as well. Also, flavor text is cool. I'm not sure how I feel about Appraisal being its own Skill… that's the case in canon, but using a Skill Slot feels a bit steep to only be for identifying items. Maybe it has some benefits with trading as well… maybe a general Trading skill would be better. Meh, it's a minor point anyways, not something I need to fret over.**

 **That's all for now. Take care!**


	5. Chapter 4: Asuna's Comet

**Friday, December 2nd, 2022, 4 A.M.**

I yawned deeply, trudging behind Kirito as we walked the halls of the labyrinth. Somehow I wound up coming with him on his late-night grinding session, and I was starting to regret it. We were in the same party, but we often went into the labyrinth at different times; Kirito was a huge night owl, while I generally couldn't stand being up past 11 or so, let alone 4 in the morning. On top of that we both tended to be loners, so we usually preferred grinding by ourselves. "Remind me, why did I come with you to grind, exactly?"

"You said that you were behind on XP and needed to get some extra fighting in."

"Tch. I'm level 11… I mean, you're probably ahead of me, but I don't have much other reason to keep grinding right now. And it's not like we'll find the boss room…"

Kirito shrugged. "The fourth Skill Slot is at level 12, though. Well, you're free to try and leave on your own if you want."

"Pass. Too tired. How much long—Huh?" Up ahead of us I could hear the trademark sound of fighting and the use of Sword Skills.

"Who else could be out here at this time? It doesn't sound like they're in danger…" We rounded the corner to find a hooded player fighting a «Ruin Kobold Trooper». The Troopers were new enemies that started appearing on the 10th floor of the labyrinth, and were never in the beta. They were around two meters tall, and had blood-red skin. They wore little armor, and used a vicious-looking axe as a weapon. Their attacks were easy to see, but they had a lot of power behind them.

As we watched, the hooded player narrowly avoided the end of a three-swing combo from the Trooper, causing the oversized kobold to stumble. The counterattack that the person executed was hard to describe. It was a basic rapier Sword Skill, «Linear», but its speed was insane, far beyond what the system did on its own. I couldn't even follow the blade; all I saw was a white streak of light, similar to a comet shooting across the sky.

Normally, since the player was handling the fight fine on their own, we would have continued on our way. However, the speed of that «Linear» was too mesmerising, and something strange about it stuck out to me: their execution of the attack was flawless, but the strategy wasn't one a skilled player would use. The mysterious player continued fighting the kobold, continuing the same pattern of evading and striking with the same Skill, even when the monster's health was low enough that a simple strike would have killed it. Once the kobold was dead, the player staggered backwards to the wall and slid down it, clearly exhausted.

I glanced over at Kirito; he looked conflicted, but after a moment he walked out of the shadowy spot where we were standing and towards the player. I shrugged and followed after him. The player noticed us, and shrunk closer to the wall, unwelcoming of the company. Once I got closer, I quickly realized that the player was a girl, based on her clothes and slender figure. She had a simple red tunic with a copper chestpiece over it, mostly obscured by her red cloak; below that were close-fitting brown leather pants with knee-length boots. Her face was still obscured by the hood of her cloak, save for her light brown eyes, which reflected the light of a nearby torch.

"That was some heavy overkill, just now. You look exhausted."

The girl glared at Kirito for a moment without saying anything, before tilting her head slightly, showing that she was confused.

"What he means is… using a «Linear» for the last hit on that kobold was excessive. A simple strike or two without using a Skill would have been enough."

She remained silent for another moment before speaking, so quietly it was almost a whisper. "So? What's the problem with it?"

Kirito looked taken aback for a moment; he clearly hadn't realized until now that the player was female. "Er… as far as the game cares, there's nothing wrong with it, but… Sword Skills take concentration to use, so using them too much can be exhausting. Fighting while tired"—he glanced over at me, and I looked back, irritated—"can be dangerous. You need to consider the trip back to town too…"

"... Trip back to town?"

 _Oh, you can't be serious._ "Yeah. When did you come to the labyrinth, exactly…?"

She paused to think for a moment. "Er… three or four days ago, I think?"

I struggled to believe that this person had been here for that long, but the tattered state of her cloak suggested that she wasn't lying. "B-But, what about supplies, and rest?"

"I have potions, but I hardly use them as I don't get hit much in the first place. I have multiple rapiers to use, as well, and I can rest in the safe area just over there. The monsters should be coming back soon, so I'm going now." Her voice was weak and full of fatigue, and she wobbled slightly as she stood up. Her rapier hung low in her hand, as if it was much too heavy for her. I was also very concerned about the fact that she had lacked mentioning anything about having food; while there was no negative status caused by the game due to hunger, you would still _feel_ hungry, and that would only serve to make concentrating harder.

"You… you're going to die if you keep going like this." Kirito spoke in little more than a hoarse whisper, but the girl still heard him, and turned around to glare at him.

"It makes no difference. We've been here for a month. So many have died already, and we still haven't passed the first floor… we'll all… die anyways…" The exhaustion of fighting like she had for four days straight finally caught up to her, and she collapsed on the ground. Kirito and I stared at her for a few seconds without moving or speaking.

"... What should we do?"

Kirito tousled his hair. "Well, we can't exactly leave her here… We could move her to the safe area, but honestly, we should probably get her out of the labyrinth completely…"

"And how exactly do you plan to do that? We _might_ be able to carry her together, but then we won't be able to fight at all."

"Hmm…" Kirito scratched his cheek while looking at the fallen girl. "Ah! This should work." He opened his inventory and materialized a sleeping bag, letting it fall to the ground.

"... Seriously?"

Kirito ignored my incredulous response and brought the sleeping bag over to the girl. "Help me pick her up so we can put her on the bag."

"You plan for us to go down 19 floors of a labyrinth, dragging her behind us all the way."

He shrugged. "You have any better ideas?"

I didn't respond, and instead muttered to myself. "Since when are you so eager to help others…"

* * *

"...ke up. Oi, Rei, wake up."

"Eh…" I opened my eyes, regretfully pulled out of my nap by the black-haired doofus sitting next to me. We were in a small clearing in the forest just outside of the labyrinth; a few meters away from me, I saw the red-cloaked fencer starting to wake up, as well. We really did pull her along through the whole labyrinth, and I was so exhausted that I started falling asleep the second we set foot in the clearing. It had taken a few hours, so it was close to 10 A.M. now.

"... Why?" The fencer girl, voice as faint as ever, muttered only that single word.

I sighed. "Well… it's not like we can just leave someone unconscious in the middle of the labyrinth…"

"Besides that, if you were really in there for as long as you said, you probably have a ton of map data that no one else has explored. It would be kind of a waste if it disappeared along with you."

I gave Kirito a confused look, but he just nodded his head back towards the girl. Her shoulders were stiff, as if she were ready to start arguing, but when she heard his rather selfish logic she didn't respond. Instead, she opened her menu and copied her map data into a small paper scroll, which she tossed to Kirito's feet. _I guess she was expecting some speech about morality or staying alive… Kirito's logic probably makes more sense to her._

She stood up, noticeably less shaky than she was in the labyrinth. "If that's all, then I'm going now."

"Er, wait, there's one other thing… regardless of your method of doing it, you're still working to clear the game too, right? Well, this afternoon there's going to be a meeting in Tolbana…"

The fencer tilted her head, and I was just as confused. "Meeting?"

Kirito nodded. "A meeting about the strategy for the boss of this floor."

"Heeh? But the 20th floor hasn't even been found yet, let alone the boss room, right?"

"I don't know, all Argo told me was that there was a meeting today, at 4 P.M."

"Whatever, let's just get back to town. I'm hungry." The fencer girl had already started walking back to Tolbana, so I decided to follow suit, and Kirito trailed behind me. She kept some distance away from us during our walk back, so none of us said anything. Once we entered the safe area, the fencer disappeared into the crowd that was milling around in the plaza. I walked over to a NPC vendor that sold food, and bought a serving of some simple soup. It didn't have much taste at all, but it was better than the dry black bread that Kirito usually bought.

I sat down at a nearby table and quickly wolfed down the soup, ignoring the various people that were staring at me. After looking around for a moment, I saw that Kirito was standing near the edge of the plaza, talking to Argo. I walked up to them, and caught the tail end of Argo's last sentence.

"... Like I said, it's an estimation. Lotta people might've changed their names, and it's not like I can track 'em down."

"That's fine. It sounds accurate to me, considering…"

Argo turned to look at me. "Ah, Rei-chan. Ya need somethin'?"

"Er…" I paused for a moment, considering to ask her about the girl Kirito and I had saved, but I decided against it; we could always talk to her ourselves at the meeting or if we ran into her elsewhere. "No, not really."

"If you say so. I'll get goin', then." Argo walked off into the plaza.

"What were you talking about?"

"Ah, I had asked her to look into something for me, she was just telling me what she found." He answered in a roundabout way for no reason, so I didn't bother pestering him further about it.

"Well, whatever. I guess we have some time to kill until the meeting."

* * *

We had spent the last few hours lazing around, as there wasn't much for us to do until the meeting today. Kirito had went off to look at some shops, so I was wondering around Tolbana on my own. It was getting close to the meeting time, so I had started heading back to the plaza to get to the amphitheater. The bell in the center of Tolbana rang just as I entered the plaza, signalling that it was 4 P.M. As I entered the amphitheater, I spotted Kirito and sat down next to him. The hooded fencer girl was sitting on his other side, a little bit away. In total, there were 45 people, just a few people short of a full raid.

A loud clapping and a strong voice emanating from the center of the stage got everyone to quieten down. "Okay! Thank you everyone for coming here today. I am Diavel! You could say that my class is «Knight»." There were no such classes in the game, but he certainly looked the part. He had tidy bronze armor, as well as a sword and kiteshield on his back. He was quite handsome, and he carried himself with confidence. His hair was also dyed a vibrant blue, which was a rare sight this early in the game. That dye was either really expensive or far out of the way, hidden in some corner of the floor.

A few jeers and whistles flew through the air at the facetious comment. If nothing else, it helped to lessen the tension of the crowd. "Alright, settle down! Now, you probably have a good idea for why I've called you all here… today, my party found the stairs to the top floor of the labyrinth. That means that the boss room will be found within a day or two!"

Most of the crowd cheered, but I was confused. "Wait, he said they found it today… they must have gone in just after we got out, because I don't remember running into anyone." I looked over at Kirito. "Did you see them pass by?"

"Er, well, I fell asleep for a bit too…"

"Hey, that was dangerous, you know!"

"Mobs don't wander that close to the labyrinth's entrance, you know that."

After giving the crowd a moment to calm down, Diavel started speaking again. "A month… It took us a whole month to get this far, but we can do this. We have to beat the boss, and prove to everyone that it is possible for us to make it out of here!" Again, the crowd flared up in cheering, more vibrantly this time.

"Now hold on just a second!"

A rough voice resounded out from the top of the amphitheater. The source bounded down the stone bleachers and landed next to Diavel. He had strange orange hair with spikes pointing out of it like a mace, and wore a chestpiece made out of metal scales. He also had a sword sheathed on his back, like Diavel.

Diavel was a little nonplussed by the intrusion, but took it in stride. "I take it you have something you want to say, er…"

"The name's Kibaou." He gazed around at the gathered players with sharp, beady eyes. "There's a few people here that have somethin' they've got to own up for!"

"And, what would that be, exactly?"

"Obvious! Those guys kept everything for themselves, and 2000 people have died now 'cause of that!"

"... I take it you're referring to the beta testers?"

"'Course I am! They up an' left Starting City first chance they got, and hogged all the good hunting grounds and quests for themselves! I'm sure a few of them are here too. They should give up whatever they've stolen from us so far an' apologize!"

 _This guy… as if antagonizing us isn't bad enough, he expects us to give up all of our hard work so far?_ I was considering going down there myself to give this cactus-headed moron a piece of my mind, consequences be damned, but someone else beat me to it.

"May I speak?" A deep voice rang out across the amphitheater, and everyone looked over to its source. The man had his hand raised, and he was… massive, for lack of a better way to describe him. He was at least two meters tall, and was completely bald with brown-colored skin. He was quite muscle-bound, as well; while a player's physique had at best a minor influence on their playstyle, the large double-headed axe on his back suited him far more than any other weapon could. He walked up to the stage and stood next to Kibaou, towering above him. I would probably look like a dwarf next to him.

"My name is Agil. Kibaou-san, let me be sure: you say that because of the beta testers running ahead of everyone else, many players died, and the testers need to take responsibility for that?"

Kibaou was intimidated by Agil's stature, but stood his ground. "Y… Yeah. If they would have just stayed to help us, most of those people wouldn't've died! Most of those people were veteran MMO players, so we could've been done with this floor by now!"

"At least 300 of those people that died are testers..." Kirito muttered under his breath. Maybe that was what he was talking about with Argo earlier.

"Well, the fact is that the beta testers _have_ helped us." He pulled out a small leather-bound book from his pocket. "This guidebook was distributed freely in shops across the floor; I imagine you have one as well, correct?"

"Yeah, what about it?" Other murmurs of agreement from the crowd proved that most of us here had one.

"It's compiled from information given by beta testers. These guidebooks were always present in shops, even before any other players had gotten there. Only beta testers would be able to provide information so quickly. It contains detailed information ranging from quest guides to item drops."

I looked over at Kirito, confused. "W-Wait, but that must be Argo's strategy guide, then. But they got it for free…?"

"Gah, that damn Rat. I paid 500 Cor for one of those things."

Kibaou had no response to Agil's statement, and stood there with his arms crossed, looking frustrated.

"Even with this information, many players still died. Kibaou, you said that many of them were veteran MMO players, correct? If so, that might be part of the reason. They may have made assumptions about SAO based on their prior experience, and because of that they got killed. In fact, it's likely that quite a few testers died as well, as many things may have likely changed from the beta test, and they made similar assumptions.

"Besides that, trying to blame people for deaths that they didn't cause is going to do us no good. We're here to clear the game, not jump at each other's throats. Our best option is to work together, tester or otherwise."

Diavel nodded after listening to Agil's speech. "He's right. We're here to fight the boss and make it to the second Floor. Antagonizing players is the worst thing we could do to ourselves… if anything, the former testers will be the strongest fighters we have. We can't afford to lose them."

Kibaou conceded their points, albeit not with much respect. "Tch, fine. I'll play along for now. But I still don't trust the beta testers." He stalked off of the stage, and Agil followed after him.

"Alright, now that that's cleared up, this meeting is concluded for now. Everyone, once the boss is found we'll meet here again to form a strategy. Do your best, and let's beat that boss!"

"Yeah!" The crowd erupted in cheers, and with that, the meeting was over. I looked over to where the hooded fencer girl was sitting, but she had already vanished from the amphitheater.

* * *

As Diavel had expected, the boss room was found the very next day. A meeting was held again, at roughly the same time in the afternoon. It went much more smoothly, with no noisy cactus-headed interruptions. The party had scouted the boss, and there was a new guidebook with updated information, so we were able to come up with a strong strategy. There was a small problem, though: the group was to split into parties, and since we were a few people short of a full raid group, there would be one party that would have less people. In other words, that would be our party.

I sighed. "Well, honestly I'm fine with not having to party with anyone else. Although…" I looked around, and as I had thought, the mysterious fencer was standing a little bit away from everyone else, alone. I jabbed Kirito in the side with my elbow. "Oi. It would probably be a good idea to invite her to our party."

"E-Er…"

"I know, she's kind of… cold, but we're not much different, honestly. Besides, you saw her fighting; she really shouldn't be left out. Plus, Diavel would probably just have her join our party anyways." I shoved him forwards slightly, sending him stumbling towards the girl.

"A-A-Ah… jeez, Rei. Um… you haven't joined anyone's party yet, right?"

"... No, I haven't."

"Well, you can join up with us, then…" She glared at him from under her hood, and he hastened to explain. "E-Er, that is, a raid group is made of eight parties, so to be able to participate you need to join one…" He sent a party invite to the girl using her cursor menu.

"... If that's the case, I suppose I will join you." She accepted the invite, and a third health bar appeared in the upper-left corner of my vision.

"Asuna, huh…"

She jumped and looked at me, startled. "H-How did you—"

"Ah, right, my bad… this is probably the first time you've joined a party, right? In the upper-left corner of your vision, there should be two other health bars…"

Asuna looked to the area in question, before carefully reading out our names. "Kirito… and Rei?"

I bowed lightly. "Nice to meet you. Though, we really should have introduced ourselves properly yesterday…"

Before we could go any further, Diavel walked up to us; he had probably been going around to the other parties assigning roles while we talked. "Party H… could you three please assist Party E with fending off the «Ruin Kobold Sentinels»?" He spoke with an apologetic look on his face, but there was nothing to be done about it; even if our party was comprised of two beta testers and a newbie prodigy, we wouldn't be able to help with the boss without a full party.

Asuna looked tense, probably annoyed that we would be fighting the trash mobs, but Kirito spoke before she could. "Of course, that's an important role."

"Thank you! With that, everyone should know what they need to do." He walked back towards the stage in the center of the amphitheater.

"Important… we won't even fight the boss." Asuna let her words out with a low, dangerous-sounding tone.

Kirito backed away a step. "H-Hey, keeping the additional enemies off of the other groups _is_ important… Anyways, there's not much we can do about it. Without a full party, Switching and stuff wouldn't really be possible for us…"

"Er, Switching?"

At this point, Diavel spoke up from the center of the stage, catching everyone's attention. "Alright, everyone! You all should know what to do. We'll gather tomorrow in the central plaza at 9:00 in the morning!" Everyone let out their usual cheer, and the crowd dispersed, spreading around the town.

Meanwhile, Kirito looked completely defeated. I didn't blame him; aside from her skill, Asuna was a complete newbie, so we'd have to teach her what to do.

I sighed, blowing air up at my bangs. "Let's go somewhere else, trying to explain with the noisy crowds around will take forever."

"Nowhere in town will probably be quiet right now, and an inn room would be kind of cramped… let's just head back to our room, I guess." Kirito started walking towards the east side of Tolbana, and I glanced over at Asuna before hastening to catch up with him.

"Er, how would where you're staying be any different from any other inn room?"

We stopped to look at Asuna, confused, before remembering that she was completely new to this. "Aah, right. Well, it's possible to find unmarked rooms that you can rent besides normal inn rooms. They'll generally be part of an NPC house, so it'll usually only be at larger houses."

Kirito nodded. "Our room is the second floor of a farmhouse. It's 80 Cor a night, and has two rooms as well as a bathroom. There's free milk from the first floor, too…"

"W-Wait…" Asuna grabbed his collar quite forcefully. "You said it has a bathroom!?"

"Ehehe… you can use it, if that's what you're wondering." I was amused by Asuna's reaction; it was the most animated I'd seen her act so far. I started walking again, and Asuna hurried to follow me, dragging Kirito along slightly before letting go of his collar.

Hopefully, tomorrow we'd be standing at the top of the stairs to the second Floor.

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 **Hey everyone, thanks for taking your time to read my story!**

 **Man, I've gotta say, I wasn't expecting** _ **this**_ **much of a gap between the last chapter and this one. Long story short, I wrote 3/4ths of a chapter, scrapped it, didn't do anything for over a week, wrote this, and then put off proofreading and uploading it until now. I have already started work on the next chapter, though, so that's a thing.**

 **So, this chapter. Nothing new, really. We get to meet Asuna and some other people, and boss meetings happen. To be honest, this is quite similar to how it goes in Progressive Volume 1, but with the way I want things to go I couldn't justify changing things much. While we're on the topic of canon… I am 100% going to be doing the Elf Campaign quest line. It's too important to skip over, for one reason in particular that I don't want to spoil yet. That being said, I am going to do my best to change stuff as much as I can, otherwise I might as well just tell you to go buy the Progressive novels (which you should do anyways, by the way). Volume 4 hasn't quite released yet—it comes out in three days as of my writing of this. I'm not sure if I'll get it or not before I cover Floor 5, but it's safe to say that after that floor, I won't be following anything, minus pre-existing floor and gear descriptions and (probably) a few events from the original LNs.**

 **Also, I fixed a typo in the previous chapter.**

 **That's all for now. Hopefully I'll be writing another one of these within less than a month this time. Take care!**


	6. Chapter 5: Tester's Resolve

**Sunday, December 4th, 2022, 9:10 A.M.**

"...Alright everyone, let's head out to the labyrinth!" Diavel had given his usual speech about clearing the game before heading north out of Tolbana, the raid group following in his wake. Asuna, Kirito, and I trailed behind everyone else at the back of the group. I could hear the various chatter of the other players drifting back towards us. _This kind of reminds me of—_

"This is almost like...a field trip," Asuna spoke, mirroring my cut-off thought. She turned her head slightly to look over at Kirito and I. "Are other games like this as well?" We had talked at length with Asuna last night, explaining various things about SAO and the boss battle that we were walking towards. It took a while to explain all the different terminology and strategies, but Asuna was eager to learn.

"A field trip…" Kirito smiled before shaking his head slightly. "Not really. This is the first FullDive game like this… any other game that would be played on a monitor doesn't really give the same feeling."

"Still, it feels so… strange. We're walking towards a dangerous fight, that we might not come back from, and yet… everyone seems like they're just enjoying a walk."

I put my hands behind my head as we continued to walk. "Well… this is the norm for us now, I guess. We'll have to get used to it, whether we like it or not."

Asuna hummed. "Well, let's do our best regardless."

* * *

After a few hours of walking and cutting through kobolds, we found ourselves standing in front of the boss room. Diavel didn't give any sort of speech, as the sound would attract kobolds from around the area to come and attack us. Instead, he walked around, checking over all of the parties one last time before walking up to the door. After looking at it for a moment, he nodded and placed his hand upon it before slowly pushing it open. He entered, the rest of the raid group pouring into the boss room behind him.

The boss room hadn't changed at all from the beta. It was made out of the same stone as the rest of the labyrinth, and was about 100 meters long and 20 meters across. There were small stone pillars along either wall, spaced about 10 meters apart. A tattered red carpet ran across the whole room; at the end of it, I could barely make out a throne in the darkness, with a large door behind it. Once everyone had entered the room, the walls, floor, and ceiling lit up with a mysterious iridescent light. The boss, «Illfang the Kobold Lord», jumped off of his throne, and four health bars appeared next to his head. He held a massive axe made of bone and a round leather shield. Three «Ruin Kobold Sentinels» emerged from behind the throne. The boss and its minions started charging towards us.

"Alright everyone, this is it! Groups A, C, and F, prepare to attack the boss; B, D, and G, be prepared to Switch at any time! E and H, make sure to keep those Sentinels busy!"

The group responded in chorus with a "Roger!" and rushed towards the enemy. The Sentinels split up, two of them on the boss's left side and one on the right; Kibaou's group was already on the boss's left, so we took the right kobold. Kirito ran ahead of Asuna and I, and intercepted a Sword Skill from the kobold with one of his own. The Skills cancelled each other out, and the force pushed the two apart and knocked the kobold's mace above its head.

"Rei!"

"On it!" I had already started moving once the Skills cancelled. I activated my own Sword Skill, «Reversal», by holding my dagger behind me and to the left in a reverse grip. I ran at the kobold and slashed it across its throat, before reversing my grip on the dagger and slashing back in the opposite direction. Due to the kobolds wearing heavy armor and a full helmet, the throat was their only accessible weak spot. My attack took about 20% of the kobold's health, and it backed away slightly while I was stuck in my Skill's post-motion delay. Kirito stepped in front of me, ready to defend until he could make another opening.

We continued this pattern, with Asuna and I alternating Switches. Asuna was wielding an upgraded «Wind Fleuret», a rapier that Kirito had recently gotten as a drop, instead of her store-bought rapiers that she had been using. We had wanted to make a rapier out of one of the ingots we had gotten from the quest Kirito and I did early on, but we couldn't find a smith that could make use of them. In any case, we were having little trouble dealing with the kobolds that came our way. Kibaou's group relied on brute force more than hitting the kobold's weak spot, but they still dealt with their kobolds just fine.

The boss fight continued rather uneventfully for some time; Diavel did a good job guiding the groups and all of the boss's attacks matched the information we had. However, a few players were getting a bit careless with their Switching, and were taking longer to back off in order to do some more damage to the boss.

Kibaou's group and the three of us had no more kobolds to fight, so we were standing behind the other groups, watching them fight. Soon, the boss was down to its last health bar; in the beta test, Illfang had dropped his axe and shield and switched to a talwar once his health turned red. He also became much more aggressive with his attack patterns. We had gone over all of this during the strategy meeting, so everyone was prepared for it.

Diavel's group took the boss's health down into the red zone, and they stayed forward, despite not being fully recovered. As expected, the boss threw away its axe and shield, and drew a sword from the sheath at his back. I heard Kibaou speak up a few meters away from me. "Oi, I don't know what a talwar is, but it ain't any kinda Japanese sword, right?"

My breath caught in my throat, and to my left Kirito froze up as well. A talwar was an Indian cavalry sword, with much more of a curve than Illfang's current sword and certainly not made for a two-handed grip. What Illfang was wielding looked like a massive nodachi, probably as long as I was tall. "Shit!" I tried to get to Diavel, but there were multiple groups of players in my way. One of the Sword Skills that a katana-wielding mob had used in the beta was a spinning slash; since Illfang was surrounded, there was little doubt that he would use that attack. "That's not a talwar! Get away from the boss, now!"

One of the players had already noticed the discrepancy and started moving away, but it was too late. Illfang's nodachi started glowing, and he jumped up into the air. As he landed, he spun around in a circle, hitting all six players in Diavel's group. It knocked them back slightly, and afflicted them all with the «Stun» status effect, meaning that they couldn't move at all for a few seconds. One player, the only one in the group not wearing metal armor, was only at 50% health at the start of the attack; while he was stunned, the damage drained his whole health bar and he shattered into blue polygons. No one else that was hit was above 40% afterwards.

The delay on Illfang's Skill was long, over a second, but the stun was longer. As his delay wore off, he started another Skill, aimed at Diavel. I had managed to get through the crowd of players, but I wasn't quite close enough to help. Illfang slashed upwards, which threw Diavel into the air. The boss continued attacking, slashing Diavel twice more before ending with a thrust. The attack blasted Diavel away, sending him flying about 25 meters back, where he landed near Kirito and Kibaou. No one else moved.

After dealing with Diavel, Illfang turned his attention to me, as I was the next closest player. He pulled his nodachi far back over his shoulder, preparing for yet another Skill. There was no way trying to block it with my dagger would do any good. Instead, I jumped up and stabbed Illfang in the chest, just barely avoiding his sword. I used my dagger to pull myself up to the giant kobold's shoulder. Fortunately, having high Agility made it much easier to pull off difficult, gymnastics-like stunts like that.

I jumped backwards off of Illfang's shoulder and used the Sword Skill «Dive». It was a basic downward slash, but could only be activated while in the air, so normally it had little use; however, since Illfang was a tall boss, I was able to make use of the height to run the attack all the way down his back, as the Skill wouldn't end until I landed. After that, Illfang had about 25% of his HP remaining.

I expected Illfang to turn and face me, but he stayed facing forwards. I came out from behind him to see Kirito and Asuna rushing the boss, Kirito slightly ahead. _Well, at least_ someone _is trying to help. The three of us probably can't hold on alone though… we need someone to get everyone else fighting again._ While Asuna and Kirito attacked the boss, I backed off slightly, ready to help if I needed to. I glanced back at the rest of the raid group; many of them were still recovering, and some were fending off more Sentinels, so they weren't able to help. I tried to ignore the fact that I didn't see Diavel among them.

I looked back at the boss; Kirito and Asuna were using the same strategy that we had used against the Sentinels. At some point, Asuna had removed her cloak, revealing waist-length, light orange hair. Kirito was putting everything he could behind his Sword Skills to block Illfang's, and sooner or later he would slip up and accidentally hinder the Skill or use the wrong one entirely. As the boss reached 15% health, Kirito misjudged which Sword Skill to use, and was caught by an upward slash. He got thrown backwards and landed near me, his health at about 30%, just into the red. Asuna had reacted to Kirito getting hit by dashing in to attack the boss, which put her right in the path of the Skill that had hit Diavel earlier.

Before Illfang could hit Asuna, Agil, Group B's leader, rushed in using a charge Skill and blocked the attack with his axe. "We'll fend him off while you recover! DPS shouldn't be doing a tank's job, after all." Asuna nodded and backed away, and I ran forwards to help Kirito up.

"You okay?"

"Okay as I can be after getting slashed across the chest… wish the pain absorber hadn't been lowered." In the beta, getting hit by attacks caused only a slightly numb sensation. Since the full release, though, getting cut stung somewhat, and it seemed like it had gotten a little worse over the past month. The attack Kirito just took wouldn't prevent him from fighting, but it still probably hurt. He pulled out a potion and quickly drank it, grimacing at the taste. His health slowly started rising, but it would be a while before it was full again. While he waited, Kirito called out the directions of Illfang's attacks to help Group B defend against them, since the attacks were unfamiliar to them.

Asuna turned around for a moment to check on us. The only other time I had seen her face without her hood was last night, though it had taken some convincing from Kirito and I for her to take it off. Even now, I was still amazed by how beautiful she was; even the symmetrical nature of SAO's rendering wasn't enough to justify her beauty.

I shook my head and returned my focus to the boss battle. I walked up to stand next to Asuna. "We can use the openings Agil and the others make to attack. If we go from opposite sides, we can attack at the same time… just be careful to not go too far around him, otherwise he might use his 360 attack again."

"Got it."

We didn't cut down Illfang's health quite as fast as when Kirito and Asuna were fighting alone, as it was a bit slower to work with eight people instead of two. We continued to fight for a while without much incident, and Kirito joined the fight as well. The rest of the raid group watched from a few meters back.

"Alright!" Kirito shouted once there was only a few percent of health remaining. "Rei, Asuna, one more attack!"

Agil and his party backed off, and the three of us attacked, Asuna on the left, myself on the right, and Kirito in the center. Asuna stabbed the boss with Linear, and I did the same with Lunge. Shortly after our attacks, Kirito activated the Skill «Vertical Arc», pulling the sword down Illfang's chest before reversing and pulling it back up. As the light of the Skill faded away, Illfang burst into countless blue polygons. I fell onto my rear, exhausted.

A large message window appeared above where Illfang died, reading only « _Congratulations!_ » in English. A smaller window appeared in front of me, informing me of my gained Cor and XP; I recieved enough to reach level 12. The room remained silent for a moment before bursting into cheers. However, I didn't join in the celebrating; my mind was stuck on the fact that two people had died, including our leader.

" _Congratulations,_ you three. We likely wouldn't have made it through this without you," Agil's deep voice boomed from behind us.

"... But… but Diavel—"

"Why!?" A loud shout echoed from the rest of the raid group. "Why did you let them die!?"

I shot up and turned around to find the source of the voice. Someone walked out in front of the rest of the group; their sheath held a curved sword. I didn't recognize the player, but I knew they were in Group C, the one led by Diavel.

Kirito turned around as well, tilting his head in confusion. "... Let them die?"

"You knew about the different sword, but didn't say anything until it was too late! They wouldn't have died if you had told us!"

My eye twitched. "So… so you're saying it's our fault, yeah?"

"Of course I am!"

It took a lot to get me to speak up in front of a group, but this guy's nonsense was just too much. I stalked up to him with fire burning in my eyes, undeterred by the full head of height he had over me. "Okay, NO _._ First off, we had absolutely no way of knowing that the sword had changed until it was unsheathed. I didn't even notice it was different until Kibaou pointed it out. Second, your group was extremely overextended by staying right next to the boss during a phase change while NONE of you were near full health. From what I remember, the plan we agreed on at the meeting was that whatever group was near the boss during the change was supposed to retreat. Third, unlike many of you, we actually tried to help. Kirito fended the boss's attacks off BY HIMSELF. He doesn't even have any metal armor!"

Someone from the back of the raid group spoke in a shrill voice. "... B-But you… you knew its Sword Skills! There's never been any Skills for a sword like that so far… you must be beta testers!"

"Oh—"

Agil interrupted me. "Why should it matter if they're beta testers? The information they know won't be different from what's in the guide. All that means is that there was a katana-wielding mob sometime later in the beta."

The man from Group C spoke up again. "That guide… it's written by the Rat, right? She must be a tester too! How can we know that any of that info is true—"

" _Oh, shut the fuck up!_ " Blaming us was bad enough, but anyone else, especially Argo, was going too far. "You seriously think that any of us would put our lives at risk just to feed you false information!?"

"You testers are just greedy! You want to get everything for yourselves…" He pointed at Kirito. "He got the LA Bonus! You don't care if the rest of us die!"

 _Oh, this is ridiculous!_ "Are you serious!? We're just as stuck here as you are! Why the hell would ANYONE in here want to get someone killed just for their own benefit!? All that will do is keep us here longer!" Unfortunately, it was already a moot question; Kirito had told me a while back that another beta tester tried to PK him using monsters to get a quest item, and ended up getting himself killed instead.

The idiot in front of me opened his mouth to spew garbage again, but before he could say anything I heard footsteps from behind me. I spun around to see Kirito approaching, his sword held lazily in his left hand and a cocky look on his face. _What is he doing?_

"Listen, you're saying that testers like us are to blame for this, right? Really, you shouldn't compare me with the other testers. Most of the beta testers were complete newbies to the game; you guys now are probably better than they were at the end of the test. I got the furthest in the game out of anyone in the test. The reason I could defend against the boss was like Agil said; I've fought katana-wielding monsters before. I know way more than Argo, more than any tester for that matter."

"Are… are you insane? You… you're just a cheater!"

Kirito shrugged. "Eh, I wouldn't say that." He opened his inventory and messed with his equipment, and a new black coat appeared in place of his old gray one. "I just know what I'm doing." He turned back around and started walking towards the door at the back of the boss room. Everyone watched his retreating back wordlessly.

I shook my head. _What an idiot… I guess he's preventing them from hurting the other testers? That doesn't really seem like him… Well, whatever. It's not like it puts us in a position we're unfamiliar with…_

"Oi." From near the front of the raid group, Kibaou stepped up to face me. "Listen… I get it wasn't yer fault. Ya helped us today. But, that don't mean I respect ya… I'll do things my own way."

I nodded. At least he was honest. "Fair enough. Stay safe." I turned and started walking after Kirito. When I walked past Agil and Asuna, the former spoke up.

" _Be careful._ We'll see you at the next boss."

"... _We will_."

Asuna fell into step behind me without saying anything. I didn't have any reason to stop her. Kirito had already gone through the doors and up the spiral stairs, so we started up as well. Hopefully it wouldn't take another month to clear the second Floor.

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 **Hey everyone! Thanks again for reading, and a big thanks to those that have followed and favorited so far!**

 **First, I made a small edit to Chapter 1: initially I wrote that the beta testers made it to Floor 8, but I changed it to Floor 10.**

 **So, yaay boss fight, beta testers antagonized, Kirito shifts blame, yadda yadda yadda. I don't think I'll have many chapters on the Second Floor; it's really kind of a boring floor to me. It's just a bunch of angry cows. Maybe I can come up with something dramatic, or maybe I'll just have to be lame and roll with canon for a chapter or two. We'll see.**

 **I'm going to cut down on my use of angle brackets; the only time I'll use them for names of things is the first time they're introduced (and possibly also if it makes more sense in the sentence structure to have identifying marks). They will also be used for system text that doesn't fall under the usage for corner brackets, which isn't nearly as vague. Dunno if I'll go back and make any applicable changes in previous chapters, because lazy. Formatting is too complicated sometimes. Blech.**

 **Another formatting thing: in some cases (likely more often down the line), such as this chapter, italicized text represents speech/writing in a language other than Japanese, mostly English. The problem I have with this is that italics already has multiple other uses. I think it shouldn't be a problem, though, as the specific usage will likely be specified through context or just by flat-out stating as such.**

 **That's all for today. Take care!**


	7. Chapter 6: Shattered

**Sunday, December 4th, 2022, 1:30 P.M.**

I sighed as the door closed behind me. "Well, the aftermath of that was way more draining than any boss fight."

Asuna sighed and shook her head. "I can't believe those people… trying to push all the blame off onto someone else…" We climbed the narrow spiral staircase in relative silence; Asuna stopped in confusion once she reached the top. "Um, why does this door have a carving of a bull on it?"

"All the doors leading to the next Floor have carvings on them that represent something about the Floor. As you can probably guess, the second Floor is cow themed. It's a mix between rocky savannas and more mountainous areas. The main settlement is called Urbus, by the way." I pushed open the door, revealing a view across most of the floor from atop a cliff. There were terrace-like stairs leading down the side of the cliff; Kirito was sitting on the edge of one of the steps. I walked over and sat next to him, while Asuna stood behind us.

I broke the silence after a few moments. "... Was that really necessary?"

"..." He shrugged. "Well, arguing with them wasn't getting anywhere… That was the only way I could think of to get them to leave all the other testers alone."

"By making a scapegoat out of yourself."

"Yeah… well, and the two of you by association if you stay in a party with me."

I scoffed. "Like I care about what they think."

Asuna was similarly unabated. "... I'd rather be an outcast than have to agree with them. Besides, I trust the two of you."

Kirito sighed. "Well, it's your choice, I guess."

I slapped Kirito lightly on the shoulder. "If it's any consolation, Agil got what you were trying to do, and Kibaou… doesn't hate you, at least. I think."

"You sure are reassuring. Let's go activate the Gate, I guess." Kirito stood up and stretched, and started walking down the stairs next to him. Asuna and I followed behind him. We walked mostly in silence for the rest of the trip to Urbus; spawn rates were lowered when a Floor was first opened, so we didn't run into any mobs. As we entered the town, the popup «Entering Safe Area: Urbus» appeared in my vision, and I was finally able to relax. Before doing anything else, we headed to the center of town, where we found the Teleport Gate in the center of an elevated plaza. We walked up to it, but Kirito hesitated to activate it.

"Something wrong?" I asked.

"Well, it's just… after what happened, I don't feel like it'd be a good idea to be around when everyone comes through the gate."

"Aah… well, if we just leave it, it should activate automatically once two hours have passed, right? Or the rest of the raid could activate it once they get here."

"Making everyone wait that long would be even worse, and I think it will take them a while to make the trip."

"Hmm…" I looked around the plaza, trying to figure out what we could do. "Well, we could go hide in one of the buildings around here before the Gate fully activates. It takes a couple seconds, right?"

"I guess that works… you two go to that building at the east of the square, the one that looks like a church. I'll run over after turning on the Gate."

"'Kay." Asuna and I ran over to the building in question, which was currently devoid of NPCs. We climbed the stairs up to the third floor of the building, which had a few windows looking out over the plaza. As we walked up, the town's music changed from its normal, somber tune to an orchestral fanfare—Kirito had just activated the Gate. The main towns of each floor would often have an orchestra or some other performer playing some music. Out in the Floor or in smaller towns it was usually quiet, though. I was thankful for that—during the beta the idea of having BGM play throughout the game world was tested but it was quickly dropped. Having to listen to it day in, day out would probably get tiresome quickly.

We looked out the window, and saw the Gate lighting up, still not completely activated. Kirito rushed up the stairs and appeared behind us. Each Teleport Gate had a different style based on the floor; this one was a massive arch carved out of stone. Inside the arch, a translucent, water-like portal appeared, and masses of people started pouring out of it, cheering and celebrating. Most of them came out of the north side of the gate, but two people came out of the south, catching my eye. One of them was wearing a brown cloak and leather gear, and their hood was blown back by the wind, revealing curly blonde hair. Behind her was a player wearing a hooded black cloak.

"Hey, Kirito. It looks like someone is chasing Argo."

"Yeah, I saw… this doesn't seem good. Let me activate my «Tracking» ." Tracking was a mod for the Searching Skill; every 50 or 100 levels, it was possible to add one of various mods to a Skill that enhanced it or added new abilities.

After fiddling with his menu, Kirito jumped out the window and started running along the rooftops, following the direction that Agro and the two other players had went. Rolling my eyes, I followed after him, and Asuna followed behind me, looking confused but not questioning us. Of the three of us, Kirito had the lowest Agility stat, so we both kept up with him without issue.

We followed Kirito out of the western gate of Urbus and across the plains, which had fairly dangerous monsters wandering around. We continued past the plains towards a more rocky area, and stopped near a valley. We could hear Argo yelling from inside.

"How many times do I have to tell ya!? This isn't for sale, and that's it!"

A rough-sounding man responded. "Are you withholding the information so you can raise its price later, then!?"

Kirito started climbing up the nearby cliff, looking perplexed. Asuna and I followed him, and we came to a small flat area where we could look down into the valley below. In front of Argo stood the player that had been chasing her.

"It's not price! I told you before, I don't want people blamin' me for what happens!"

"Why would that be a problem!? I have no reason to blame you, regardless of what you want me to pay! I will get that Extra Skill!"

"...Haa?" Kirito breathed out in surprise at the man's words. Certainly, a new Extra Skill was surprising; the only ones that were known before were «Meditation», which was of limited usefulness, and the «Katana» skill, which no one knew how to unlock yet. "Stay up here for a minute…" With that, Kirito jumped down and landed in between Argo and the man, surprising them.

"Who are you!?"

"Kii-bou!?"

He turned to look at Argo questioningly. "What's going on here?"

"What's going on here is she's being greedy!" shouted the man, glaring at Kirito angrily.

Argo stomped her foot in annoyance. "For the last time, I'm not bein' greedy!"

"Look…" Kirito sighed, shaking his head, "whatever it is, she clearly doesn't want to sell it. Leave her alone."

"Tch…" The hooded man slowly moved his hand closer to his waist, where his sword was sheathed. "And why should I listen to you?"

"Eugh… let's go down there. This is going south real fast." I jumped down and landed next to Kirito, and Asuna landed next to me, further surprising Argo and the man. I tried to get a look at his face, but his hood covered it in shadow.

"Gr… seriously, why are you so stubborn about this?"

Argo sighed in frustration. "I didn't even bring them here… would you just get out of here already?"

"Tch. This isn't the end of this." The man turned around and stalked off in the direction of Urbus.

"Riiight…" I turned around to face Argo. "What the heck was that about? A new Extra Skill?"

"Ehh, you sure saved my hide there."

Kirito pushed her further after she dodged my question. "Hey, you owe me one anyways, right? What was he going on about?"

"... You three swear that ya won't hold it against me?"

"Of course," Kirito responded. Asuna and I nodded.

She sighed. "Follow me, then." Argo led us up a small trail along the wall of the valley and into a cave.

"How the heck did you even find this path?"

"That's not important, unless you're willing to pay, of course."

I sighed. "No, no, it's fine."

We continued through the cave for a while, and emerged into a small clearing at the top of a mountain. It was surrounded by small cliffs, and contained a few large boulders, a small spring, a single tree, and a small hut.

"There ya are."

"Er, okay…" The four of us walked into the building. Inside was some basic furniture, and a well-built old man. Above his head was a shining golden exclamation mark.

"This is the NPC that gives the «Martial Arts» Extra Skill. Naturally, there's a quest involved. It's up to you if you want to take it."

"Martial Arts, huh…" Kirito mumbled.

"Unarmed combat, as ya could probably guess. 'Least, I assume."

"Is that so… When did you find out about this?"

"At the end of the beta. A NPC on a higher floor gave some information about it, that guy has been buggin' me since."

"And you didn't sell him the info, because… he'd hold a grudge about the quest, or something?"

"It's not just the quest! Most people would get over it if the quest was hard or somethin'... nah, this is somethin' they'd have to deal with forever!" Argo stomped her foot on the ground for emphasis.

I was skeptical of Argo's claims. "Really, it can't be that bad. I don't know about you two, but I'll try it… I have an empty Skill Slot, and Martial Arts would work well with my fighting style." Asuna and Kirito looked at each other and shrugged before walking with me up to the old man.

"Do you wish to seek my teaching?"

"Yes." The three of us responded in unison.

With such a simple exchange, the exclamation point turned into a question mark, and the NPC led us outside. "Your goal is simple. Split those boulders using your bare hands, and I will teach you what I know."

"Wha…" I walked up to a boulder and tapped it; if you were familiar with the system, such an object's durability could be estimated by its hardness. A weak object would almost sound hollow… needless to say, this rock didn't. "T-This thing is near-unbreakable…" I turned around to speak with the old man again—

And suddenly his hand flashed across my face with a writing brush. I felt my stomach sink, and looked over at Asuna and Kirito. Sure enough, they had whiskers on their face.

"You may not leave until the boulder has been split, and this mark will represent such."

Kirito tried in vain to rub the ink off, but failed. "I see… so you tried the quest, failed, and you decided to keep the whiskers."

"Yep! By the way, that rock's demonic."

"Ugh… do the whiskers at least look okay?"

"Well, Aa-chan's and Rei-chan's are fine, but…" Argo looked at Kirito's face before bursting out into laughter. Asuna and I started laughing as well.

"Gah…" Kirito ran over and looked into the spring to see his reflection. Without saying another word, he walked over and started punching one of the boulders with all his might, which only got us to laugh harder.

"Well, I'll leave you three to it, then. Good luck! If you didn't bring any food, the old master should be able to provide some!"

In the end, it took Kirito and I three days to break the boulders. Somehow Asuna got it done in just a day, so she left to go explore the Floor.

* * *

 **Thursday, December 8th, 2022, 7 P.M.**

After we had finally completed the quest for the Martial Arts skill, we decided to grind for some materials to upgrade our weapons. My Wolfswipe and Kirito's Anneal Blade were both at +6, and Asuna's Wind Fleuret was at +4. The upgrading system had five applicable stats: «Sharpness», «Accuracy», «Quickness», «Heaviness», and «Durability», generally abbreviated using their first letter. Kirito had specced his sword to three Sharpness and three Heaviness—or 3S3D—as he liked to focus on heavy attacks that could kill a mob in one or two hits while still staying agile; Durability raised the weight of the weapon, though not as much as Heaviness did. Asuna's rapier was upgraded to 3A1D; she had enough speed just from her own skill and weapon type, so she didn't use Quickness. My dagger was the least specialized at 2S2A1Q1D, demonstrating how much of a mouthful the system could become, especially at higher levels.

While we were grinding «Windwasps» for the materials that Asuna needed, the three of us made a bet to see who could kill the most, and Kirito lost. He never really stood a chance; due to Asuna's high accuracy, she was able to hit the Windwasps' weak spot consistently with Linear, killing them in one hit. On top of that, she had spent a lot of the extra two days she had fighting against the wasps, so she was used to them. While I wasn't quite as accurate, my shorter attack range made it easier for me to hit the weak spot consistently. Kirito's strategy of 'hit stuff really hard' didn't work out too well for the wasps, and by the end of it he was using Martial Arts more than his sword, but he still wasn't able to keep up with us. As a result, Asuna and I got a free cake, paid for by Kirito.

"Man, that cake is going to cost everything I got fighting those wasps…"

"Then it's completely paid for, and you have nothing to worry about. Lighten up, you'll get to eat it too." I gave Kirito a light slap on the shoulder.

"Come on, hurry up." Asuna led us through Urbus's dull streets to an inconspicuous shop hidden in the mess of buildings.

I was surprised that Asuna knew the location of the shop so well. "Say, Asuna, how did you find this place, anyways? It's not very noticeable."

"I asked Argo-san."

"Aahh…" Come to think of it, Argo had seemed familiar with her. "What was it that she had called you the other day? Aa-chan?" Her hood twitched slightly, but she didn't respond. _I wonder if it gets on her nerves… I might start calling her that._

We entered the shop, which was devoid of any players, so Asuna and I took our cloaks off. Kirito had mentioned the other day that he wanted to disguise himself so that others wouldn't recognize him, but the second he put on his 'disguise'—a bright yellow-and-blue bandanna and a leather vest—I instantly rejected it and told him to just not wear his coat. It had given me the idea of buying a cloak like Asuna's, but I was less concerned about being recognized as a beta tester and more about people just looking at me. Mine was identical to Asuna's save for the fact that it was blue instead of gray—her red cloak had apparently been destroyed during the boss battle.

The three of us sat down at a table and an NPC waitress promptly took our orders: salads, stew, some bread, and a «Tremble Shortcake». Asuna and I split the cost of the dinner, while Kirito paid for the cake in full. We ate our dinner quickly, and the waitress brought out a massive cake 35 centimeters across and almost 10 centimeters tall, not counting the piles of cream on top of it.

Kirito paled at the size of the cake. "J-Just what about this thing qualifies as 'short'?"

"It's not called a shortcake because of its height, doofus. It's just the name for the type of cake, based on its texture… though sponge cake is used in Japan, so it isn't really accurate to the crispy American original." I cut a third out of the cake using my knife and put it onto my plate.

Asuna did the same, and split off a large chunk with her fork. "Mmm… it's the Japanese kind. I like this style more anyways."

Kirito took his third as well, and we ate in silence for a while. Just as we finished the last few pieces of our cake, the shop's door opened, and six people poured in.

"Hey, Leader, you sure this place is good? It seems kinda run down, and it's outta the way…"

"Yeah, I don't like this place too much."

Their supposed leader, a scruffy-looking man with red hair and a bandanna, turned to look at them. "Get over yourselves, guys. The info I got said this place has some amazing cake. C'mon, let's—Ah! Kirito!" The man walked over to our table; Kirito looked downwards in discomfort.

"H-Hey, Klein…"

"How have you been doing man? I—" Klein stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Asuna and I, before bowing stiffly. "E-Er, excuse me! M-My name's Klein, I'm twe—Ow!" One of his friends came over and hit him over the head, prompting him to shut up.

"Don't mind him, he always does that."

I glanced over at Kirito. "E-Er, do you know them?"

"Uh… their leader, yeah… I helped him out at the start of the game…" Oddly, he looked really upset about it… he probably did something he regretted.

Klein stood back up and nodded, rubbing the spot where his friend hit him. "Yeah. We'd probably be nowhere if it wasn't for him. Ah, these are my friends." He gestured at the five others that had entered with him. "Issin, Dale, Dynamm, Harry One, and Kunimittz."

"Um, well, it's nice to meet you. I'm Asuna."

"... my name is Rei."

"Nice to meet ya." Klein glanced over at Kirito, grinning slyly. "What the heck, man? Trying to get all the ladies for yourself?"

Kirito choked on his cake. "Grk—What, no! It's just—"

I chuckled at Kirito's floundering reaction. "Hey, Kirito, he has a point… far as I know, it's just us two and Argo at the higher levels…"

"Rei, come on…"

"A-Anyways…" Klein interjected, "Say, is that cake really as good as I heard?"

I was busy enjoying Kirito's discomfort, so Asuna responded for us. "Um… I'm not sure what you heard, but it is quite good."

"I feel like 'quite good' is understating it…" I turned to look at Klein's group. They all looked kind of rough, but appearance wasn't really enough to judge them by. Regardless, I still felt a little uncomfortable. "A-All I can say is try it yourself... I guess." I glanced up at my clock to check the time, and to my surprise I found a buff icon there.

Kirito had just noticed it as well. "A Luck buff? That's new…"

"Yeah… looks like it lasts 15 minutes."

"Oi, Leader! This table's big enough for all of us! Get over here or you're not getting any cake!" All of Klein's group had already shuffled over to a table on the other side of the building.

"Gah! See you later, Kirito. Don't get too greedy, now." Klein turned around and scurried over to the large table so that he wouldn't miss out on the cake.

"I'm not greedy…" After grumbling about Klein's remarks, Kirito got up and started heading for the door. After putting our cloaks back on, Asuna and I followed after him.

"Say, Kirito… possibly, was what Klein-san said true?"

"Huh? ...Gah—what? No!"

"Come on, Aa-chan, Kirito's not that kind of guy…" I dropped my tone and shifted away from him a few steps. "At least, as far as I know."

"Rei! Honestly…"

"Moving on, we need to figure out what to do with this buff. 15 minutes isn't exactly enough to go out and farm for a rare drop…"

Kirito tilted his head in thought. "Hm… Maybe a NPC vendor around here might have an item that doesn't show up often… Ah! We could use it for upgrading Aa-ch—"

"Hm?"

"—A-Asuna-san's rapier."

I stifled a giggle. "Alright. I'll go look at the vendors, you two can go get the upgrade."

"Wait—" Before Kirito could object, I broke off and dashed into a different street, taking the fastest route to the plaza.

"Jeez… I just need some alone time. Too many people... Might as well go look at the vendors, I guess."

I walked around Urbus, stopping to look at any NPC shops I came across. I wasn't paying much attention, though; my mind was stuck on something else.

Kirito had said that he helped Klein out when the game first launched. That being said, he didn't look too happy when Klein showed up earlier. That look was similar to one that I'd seen before, when he'd talked about his family in the past, so I knew not to press him about it. Regardless, it had made me remember something kind of important that I had completely forgotten about in my haste to get across the first Floor.

Yi. I had no clue what had happened to him after Kayaba's… tutorial. Matter of fact, he had completely slipped from my mind. Honestly, as long as he was alive, I couldn't care less about his problems. What had been eating at me, though, is that he had never messaged me at all after I had run off. With how dependent he had seemed on the first day, one would expect that I would have been bombarded with messages. So he either didn't need any help, which was best for the both of us, or…

He was already dead.

I shook my head to clear my thoughts, trying not to feel guilty. If I _hadn't_ helped him, the likelihood that he had died already would be much higher. But at the same time, he might not have tried risking his life if he didn't know how to fight…

A small chime drove my out of my thoughts; the Luck buff was 5 seconds from wearing off. I had no rare items to show for it. What a productive 15 minutes that had been…

 _I guess I should go find Kirito and Asuna. My moral crisis can wait._ I opened my map and navigated to Kirito's name in my short Friends List, tapping on it and selecting the Track option. Strangely, he didn't appear on the map. It wouldn't make sense for him to be in a dungeon now, and he probably wouldn't disable the tracking for no reason… If that was the case, he was probably using «Hiding». But why?

Deciding to just ask him about it for tomorrow, I headed to the main plaza, as I didn't feel like going to the inn this early, despite it already being nighttime. Upon reaching the plaza, I made my way over to a line of trees planted along the eastern side. They provided a nice amount of shade and were out of the way enough so that no one would bother me. As I approached, one of the tree trunks became noticeably less tree-like.

 _There's my answer, I guess._

"Um, Kirito. What are you doing?" I could see his black silhouette standing out slightly against the tree.

"Shh! I'm using Hiding for a reason right now, you know?"

I rolled my eyes and walked over to the next tree and leaned against it, pretending that there was nothing weird with the tree next to me.

"Seriously, though. What are you doing?"

"Watching the blacksmith."

"Why?"

"Because Asuna's sword shattered."

"... What?"

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 **Hey everyone!**

 **First of all, a late Merry Christmas (or whatever holiday you may or may not celebrate) and a Happy New Year to you all! Barely eked in another chapter before 2017!**

 **Close to 2 months this time… I'll try to pick up the pace, but like usual, no guarantees.**

 **This chapter… It is what it is, I guess. Long story short: school, procrastination, and a LOT of trouble trying to find a spot where I felt comfortable with what I had written.**

 **That's all. Take care, everyone!**

* * *

 **P.S.:**

 **The postscript that was here originally is no longer needed, and has been removed. Just a heads up!  
**


	8. Chapter 7: Bovine Break

**Thursday, December 8th, 2022, 7:40 P.M.**

"Um, care to repeat that?"

"It's exactly what I said," Kirito sighed. "Asuna's rapier broke right in front of us on the anvil when it was getting upgraded."

"It broke…"

I didn't get it. Why the hell would her rapier break from an upgrade? That certainly wasn't a consequence of the attempt failing in the beta.

"So you think the blacksmith might be behind it?"

"Only answer I can believe, at least at the moment. He failed a bunch of crafting attempts earlier too, though it didn't destroy the weapon."

I looked over at the blacksmith in question, who was currently not tending to any customers. From this distance all I could see was that he had light blond hair.

"Hm… Well, I'm just as clueless as you."

We fell into silence. Kirito watched the blacksmith while I looked around the plaza listlessly.

"... Hey…"

Kirito turned to look at me, but I didn't meet his eyes in order to avoid tripping his Hiding.

"Have you… thought about how everyone… outside is taking it?"

Kirito turned back to look at the smith again and spoke quietly.

"Well, to be honest, there's not really that much to think about… It won't do us any good anyways."

"I guess you're right… I just hope Maki and Kiko-chan are doing okay…"

Silence again. I yawned.

"I'm going to go to the inn now. Hopefully you'll have figured something out by tomorrow morning."

"Yeah."

I left the plaza and headed north up a small street; the inn I spoke of wasn't too far from the plaza. Once I rented a room and flopped down on the rough bed, I thought about how Kirito had answered my question.

He was right, of course; there simply wasn't much to say about it. As far as our friends—er, _friend_ , singular—and family were concerned, we were basically in a coma. Of course it'd be terrible for them. But even with us gone, they still had to go on with their daily lives.

I tapped the clock in the corner of my vision to open its menu and looked at the calendar. After thinking for a moment, I disabled my alarm; I hadn't been sleeping enough recently, so I needed the extra sleep. I didn't have any reason to get up early the next day, either. After turning off my alarm, I returned to my thoughts.

Who knows how long we might be in here? It took a month to clear the first Floor. It was hard to estimate, but at our current pace I guessed that'd we'd be done with the second Floor in about another 5 days. It was likely that we would keep speeding up, but I couldn't see us getting through Floors much faster than a week on average. Even at 5 days per floor, it would take 490 days to clear the remaining 98 Floors; well over a year.

With my useless thoughts drifting around in my head, I eventually fell asleep.

* * *

 **Friday, December 9th, 2022, 10:00 A.M.**

"Mmh… whuh?"

I woke up slowly, wondering why my usual alarm hadn't gone off to wake me up yet. Looking up at the clock, I realized that it was _much_ later than I usually got up.

"It's ten!? How did my alarm… Oh, right…"

I belatedly remembered that I had disabled my alarm last night.

"Well, damn. I didn't think I was that tired... I knew I'd wake up late, but 14 hours is kinda excessive." I shook my head and attributed the long sleep to the extra mental fatigue FullDiving can cause. "Wonder what Kirito and Aa-chan are doing…"

I opened my map and found two dots on the southern side of the Floor. It looked like they were near «Taran», the town closest to the labyrinth.

"They're already in Taran? Jeez, at least send me a message… Wait… they're probably fighting the field boss!"

I lept out of my bed and hurriedly equipped my gear. If I ran at full speed, it wouldn't take me long to get there—probably half an hour at most, accounting for fighting mobs along the way. Being able to run so fast was probably my favorite part of playing an Agility build, and my Sprint skill helped as well.

I rushed out of the inn and went south down Urbus's main street towards the town's exit.

Fortunately, the cow-type mobs tended to stay away from the roads connecting the towns of the Floor. They weren't anything I couldn't handle by myself, but they were a huge pain in the butt. The few mobs I did encounter were oversized insects, like the Windwasps that were present to the west of Urbus, but weaker. I barely even had to stop running to kill the insect mobs; the combination of my momentum and Sword Skills was enough to kill most of them in one hit.

After about half an hour, like I had estimated, I arrived at Taran. Checking my map again, I found that the dots had vanished—Asuna and Kirito were probably in the labyrinth now. It was a little frustrating, but if they had gone in under half an hour ago than I would probably be able to catch up just fine. On top of that, the rest of the clearing group was probably not as far as them, so I wouldn't run into too many monsters.

I was about to rush out of Taran and towards the labyrinth, but a sharp pain, albeit muffled by the system, stopped me in my tracks.

"Oh, right… food. Gah, to hell with it. They probably won't be in there all day, and I don't exactly want to have to deal with those stupid tauruses."

I turned and headed towards an NPC stall, resolving to wait for Kirito and Asuna to come out of the Labyrinth.

* * *

A good hour and a half later, right around noon, the two walked into Taran. I confronted them once they got to the eastern plaza.

"What the heck, you two? When did you leave this morning?"

Kirito put his hand up in a halfhearted wave when he saw me. "A-ah, hey, Rei. We left at about 8:30, I think?" He glanced over at Asuna, who nodded silently. She currently had her hood up.

"Why didn't you wake me up!?"

"Um, well, you seemed pretty tired… besides, you were still in your room."

"Well, I did need the sleep… But why should my room matter? It shouldn't have been locked to party members. Even a message probably would have woken me up."

Asuna and Kirito both jumped slightly, the latter looking away nervously. "A-ah, well, you know, it's rude to barge into your room like that a-and all…"

I sighed. "What did you do?"

Asuna lowered her hood. To my surprise, her face was neutral; I had expected her to be at least a little angry, since judging by their reaction Kirito must have barged into her room. "Well, long story short, Kirito-kun got my sword back." She tapped the green sheath at her waist—it was definitely her Wind Fleuret.

"Huh… so it didn't break? Ah, come to think of it, that smith is here in Taran, I think…" I looked around; he was set up on the opposite corner of the plaza, his anvil and wares spread out on his «Vendor Carpet».

"—!" Kirito hid behind a pillar that was supporting the balcony of a random building, and he pulled us along with him. "It'll be a problem if he sees us."

Asuna puffed out her cheeks, annoyed. "Honestly. To think he'd be set up even after you figured out his trick."

"Well, I haven't exactly figured it out…" Kirito pointed out, "I don't know how he actually stole your sword, just that he did."

I looked over at Kirito. "Speaking of which, how did you figure it out?"

"Er, let's go to the bar over there and sit down. I don't want to have to hide here the whole time. Plus, we'll be meeting Argo there soon anyways."

We walked over to the bar that Kirito pointed out and went inside. Fortunately, no one else was inside at the moment. The three of us sat down at a table far from the entrance.

"Nezha—that's his name—left the plaza at 8 last night, just a bit after you went to the inn, Rei," Kirito said. "He went to a bar and met with a few other players. He seemed friendly with them. I overheard them talking about making a lot of money, but for some reason Nezha seemed really against it."

"That's what tipped you off, then?" I asked.

"Yeah. Although, at first I thought they were being paid by someone to break people's weapons, but it was too roundabout of a way to target people. After thinking about the whole upgrading process, the only thing that made sense to me was a scam…"

"So Aa-chan's sword never broke, he just stole it."

Kirito nodded.

"I think I can guess what happened next… You rushed back to the inn, barged into Aa-chan's room, and forced her to materialize her whole inventory? And her Wind Fleuret was there."

Even if the sword had left Asuna's inventory, it was still hers. There were specific rules for how equipment ownership worked, one of which being that once an equipped weapon or piece of armor left a player's possession, it would still be flagged as theirs for a full hour, unless it got overwritten by trading, the «Robbing» Skill, replacing it with a different item, or some other similar effect. Deep in the game menu, there was an option called «Materialize All Items» that would… materialize all of your items in a pile in front of you regardless of where they were stored, with the exception of currently equipped items. It made me wonder what else was in Asuna's inventory.

"U-um, yeah, that's basically it…" Kirito quickly changed the subject. "There's something else… those people that he met up with, they were at the field boss battle today. They call themselves the Legend Braves. They have really expensive gear, but they didn't really know how to fight."

"I see. So they used the weapons they stole to buy powerful gear… They would certainly get a lot more money than they would by grinding mobs. Is that their whole goal, just to get more powerful?" I shook my head. "It seems counterproductive." Stealing other people's gear to make yourself stronger wouldn't do any good; there was no net gain in strength for the clearing group as a whole. If anything, it was a loss, since Kirito said that these guys weren't good at fighting.

Before Kirito could respond, I heard the door open. Turning to look, I found that Argo had shown up. Our conversation with her followed her usual pattern; she teased Kirito about being in a party with two girls, he gave Argo map data and asked for info on the Legend Braves, Asuna asked her about something or other—I wasn't really paying attention—and then she left.

Kirito and Asuna said that they wanted to watch Nezha to see if they could figure out how the scam worked; I wasn't particularly interested in sitting around watching a smith all day, so I went to the fields northwest of Taran to grind for a while. Going into the labyrinth on this Floor wouldn't be great for getting experience; the various taurus-type mobs that inhabited it were on a slow respawn timer, and while I could fight them solo it would probably be more trouble than it was worth. After a few hours I decided to call it a day and returned to Taran.

* * *

 **Sunday, December 11th, 2022, 11:00 A.M.**

"There you are, Argo. What's this quest that you messaged me about?"

We were currently standing at the mouth of a cave close to the southern edge of the second Floor. Argo had sent me a message earlier, requesting me to help her with a quest. Kirito had been busy for the past two days grinding to get his weapon Skill up, to test a theory about how Nezha was stealing people's gear. Asuna was with him, and I had been planning to go along as well until Argo messaged me.

"Well, nothing too major, just another step in the line that I've been following that should lead to some boss info. It should just be some basic puzzles and exploration, but it needs two people. Far as I know, there shouldn't be any combat, but we oughta be careful just in case."

"Hm, I see."

"Course, I can pay you for your help. Dunno how long it'll take though."

I smiled. "Alright. Sure, I'll help. Do you have a torch or anything so we can see in there?"

I took a few steps into the cave, and Argo followed behind me.

"There's torches set up along the walls, but I've got a few in case we need 'em."

"Any context that might help me?"

"Mm…" Argo thought for a moment. "Not much, just that the puzzles'll likely have something to do with the Floor's theme."

"'Kay, so cows and bugs. Got it."

We walked through the cave for a while; like Argo said, there were torch sconces along the wall. The cave wasn't too large, but there was enough space for 3 or 4 people of our size to walk shoulder to shoulder, just barely. Soon we came upon a set of double doors that had two levers next to them on either wall.

"I tried pullin' the levers quickly one after another earlier, but the door wouldn't budge. Seems that they've gotta be pulled at the same time."

"Got it."

Argo walked over to one lever, and I went to the other. We pulled them after a short count, and the doors opened. More walking ensued. The cave was winding around, sloping upwards and downwards slightly and likely weaving around itself.

"Hey, Rei-chan."

"What's up?"

"I'd like to ask you about somethin' that I've been wonderin' about. It's kinda personal, so you don't have to answer if you don't want to."

"... Okay, go for it."

"How close are you and Kii-bou?"

I blinked. "Um, well…"

"Er, lemme put that a bit better. You two were always chummy even in the beta, despite both of you being loners otherwise. I'd just figured that maybe you two were already friends or somethin'."

"Well, yeah, something like that."

We continued walking through the cave as we talked; there were a few doors that had puzzles that we needed to solve to unlock them, but none of them were very difficult.

"By the way, I probably won't sell this information, since it's so personal and kinda falls under info about other beta testers."

The one thing that Argo refused to sell was information about any of the beta testers. Besides that, anything was up for sale, even her own personal details… granted, those were very lucrative.

"'Probably' being the operative word… Well, whatever, it's not that big of a deal to me. Yeah, we're friends in the real world."

"Hmmmmm."

"Just friends, mind you. I know what you're trying to think."

"Oh, what could you possibly mean?"

I rolled my eyes. "Moving on, you're not really wrong about the loner part. We only have one other friend in the real world, though one or two people do come to mind that at least tried to talk with us often, though one of them was… bothersome."

It had mostly become taboo to talk about the real world as long as we were trapped here, but I thought that was kind of stupid. It's not like it was something we could just ignore, and in any case, sometimes people just needed to talk.

"That so… not much of a 'people person,' are ya?"

"Mm, just kinda introverted I guess…"

"I guess that's one way you can put it. I'd be careful with that word if I were you, though… people tend to misunderstand it a lot."

I chuckled. "I know."

"What about Kii-bou?"

"Well… he has his own reasons."

Argo understood that it was something I'd rather not talk about, so we cut off the conversation there.

After one last door, we entered into a large room that was obviously carved out by hand. There were a few shelves along the wall, mostly empty save for a few extremely old, decaying books. There was a small stone table with a few chairs on one side, and an altar and a dais on the other. Atop the dais was a throne, in which sat a crown made of stone. The altar and dais were adorned in various depictions of cows and tauruses. Most of them had been worn away by weathering—which was weird, considering that there was absolutely nothing about the room that could cause that. The only one I could make out was an image that depicted a person throwing something at a massive tauruses from a distance.

I looked around the room, mildly confused. "What is this, the secret base of a cow-worshipping cult or something?"

"I dunno about that, but it is weird. Why is there a throne just randomly in the middle of a room in a cave, and next to an altar and a mini-library?"

I looked along the shelves; none of the books were legible. I shook my head and turned to look at Argo. "Beats me."

"Hmm…" Argo was taking a close look at the altar. "There's small hoofprints at the base of the throne…" She picked up the crown and looked at it closely. "This is just rough stone. It seems more like a placeholder or a prop than an actual crown… Ah."

"What is it?"

"Quest updated. I need to take this crown back to the NPC. But, uh, I think I already have an idea about what I might be told."

"And that is?"

Argo turned to look at me. "The boss of this floor, at least during the beta, was «Baran the General Taurus», right?"

"Yeah… what about it.?"

"Did it ever strike you as weird that the first Floor boss was a lord, but the second was just a general?"

"Well, not really… But, wait. Are you saying that the boss for this floor might have completely changed?"

That was… a problem.

"Maybe. I can't say for sure; I'll have to finish the quests first. For now, let's get out of here." Argo put the crown in her inventory and looked around the room one more time before exiting. I followed behind her. All of the doors we had passed through were still open, so there was nothing for us to do besides walk to the exit.

"Thanks for the help, Rei-chan. I'll let you know when I find out what the deal with the boss is. Ah, here's your payment." Argo pulled a few coins out of the pouch on her waist and tossed them to me. "See ya later."

"Later."

Argo dashed off back towards Urbus. I looked at the coins in my hand, hoping that the boss fight wouldn't end badly.

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 **Hey everyone!**

 **AAAAAAAAAA I've finally written things. Christ almighty this took me a while. I think I'll delete the postscripts from the previous chapter after a little bit, since they're not needed anymore.**

 **I know where I'm wanting to go now; the main reason for the extended delay is due to me having some trouble figuring out how to handle the rest of the second Floor. Couldn't really get it to click; even now, I just want to keep sitting on this chapter to see if I have any better ideas floating around, but I** _ **need**_ **to make myself post it otherwise I'll never make any more progress. On top of that, the more I sit on it the more disjointed the chapter will end up feeling; some of the stuff here was written _months_ ago. Had I been more careful earlier, I wouldn't have had as much of a problem with it, but the damage is already done; at least I've prevented it from getting worse.**

 **At the time of me writing this AN I have the next chapter pretty much done, but I'm still not 100% sure I like where it's at right now… it feels like I'm jumping over too much, and a chunk of it still needs a bit of looking over as it's copy-pasted from an older draft. I plan to post it soon, though. Like, actually soon, not Soon™.**

 **In semi-related news I graduate from high school in two weeks (yay me!). In other words, I'll have about three months of total free time before I ship myself off to college. Hope for more updates.**

 **But knowing me, don't expect them.**

 **That's all. Take care!**


	9. Chapter 8: Answers

**Sunday, December 11th, 2022, 7:30 P.M.**

I tapped my foot impatiently while burning holes in the inn door with my stare. Since it was fairly late in the evening the inn was filled with other players, so Asuna and I both had our hoods up. Kirito had been grinding non-stop all day to get his weapon Skill to 100—Asuna had been with him earlier, but she had had enough fighting for one day. He had messaged me that he would meet up with Asuna and me "soon."

That was over an hour ago.

"What's taking him so long?" Asuna whined.

I sighed and looked up at our health bars. Kirito wasn't in serious danger or anything; his health hadn't gone below 75% this whole time. I would have _thought_ he would be done by now, but apparently I was wrong.

I turned my gaze back to the door. "Hm…"

"What is it?"

"Well, you said that you think Nezha originally wanted to be a fighter, right?"

Asuna nodded. "Yes, since he's named after a hero like all of the other Legend Braves. I thought it was kind of strange how obscure his name is compared to the others, though."

Indeed, everyone in Nezha's party was named after some sort of hero. Literature wasn't exactly my best subject, but apparently they were mostly well-known names: Orlando, Beowulf, Cuchulainn, Gilgamesh, and Enkidu. Nezha's namesake was a bit more obscure but after reading Argo's info on it we figured it out: it was the Western transliteration of the original Chinese name. Nezha was a young boy god in Chinese folklore, certainly befitting the theme of the Legend Braves being named after heroes. We hadn't noticed the connection ourselves because the name is read as Nataku in Japanese.

"Well, why did he become a smith? You and Kirito never saw him fighting along with the others, right?"

"Huh…"

We sat in silence for a few moments as Asuna thought.

"I don't know. But, there's one other thing that's been bugging me…"

"Hmm?"

"Nezha… doesn't seem like a bad person." Asuna shook her head. "He just doesn't come across to me that way, and his apologies felt genuine. The way he admires a weapon before stealing it, too… it's almost like he's mourning the loss. Are the other Legend Braves forcing him into this, or is there something else…?"

"…"

As I sat there pondering Asuna's words, Kirito entered through the inn door. He walked over to our table and sat down, pretending like nothing was wrong.

"What the hell took you so long?"

"Er, well, I uh, got a little sidetracked… Plus the grinding took a bit longer than I expected."

"Geh, whatever. You got «Quick Change», right? Let's go up to your inn room, it's kinda crowded down here."

We did as I said; once we got in Kirito's inn room, he unsheathed his sword and sat down on the floor in roughly the same posture that Nezha did while he was working.

"Ah, come to think of it, you two never told me exactly how Nezha pulled this whole thing off. How did he make the swap so unnoticable?"

"Oh…" Kirito trailed off. "Basically, he used the bright flare from the furnace when he tossed the upgrade mats into it."

"Mats…?" Asuna asked, confused.

"Short for materials."

"Okay," I nodded. "And the weapon breaking was… Oh! I did that once by accident, early in the beta. I forgot about that. A weapon with no upgrade attempts left will always break if you try to upgrade it, right…?"

"Yeah. Wait, how did neither you nor the smith notice that it was spent?"

"I dunno."

Kirito rolled his eyes. "Well, let's see here…" He opened up his menu and pressed the Quick Change button below his equipment; he must have already set it up to pull another sword from his inventory. The Anneal Blade in his hand flashed and almost instantly a different sword was there. Normally to change your weapon you would have to select the hand that your weapon was equipped to in your equipment menu, choose the option to swap your weapon, and choose the weapon from the list that pops up. With Quick Change it was just a single button, and there were numerous ways to customize it.

I sat up, surprised. "Hey, that was barely more than a blink. That'd be really easy to miss with the forge flaring up like it does."

Kirito nodded. "At this point it's pretty clear… First, he gets the weapon from the customer to upgrade it, and since he's holding the weapon it counts as equipped for him, even if he's not the owner."

"Right. And you can set Quick Change to pull a weapon of the same type from your inventory, right?" I questioned.

"Yep. He swaps it to a spent weapon using Quick Change, covering up the small flicker with the bright flash from him throwing the upgrade materials into his furnace. The spent weapon breaks, and it looks like the person's weapon broke… It's actually really smooth."

"Don't go praising him," Asuna warned. "Well, that's it then, right? All we have to do now is figure out how to confront him."

"Yeah…" I mumbled. "Well, he might recognize you two, right? I've never met him, so I wouldn't raise any suspicion. Ah, well, Kirito's the one with Quick Change, so he'd have to do it regardless, I guess."

Kirito shrugged. "So, ask him for an upgrade and once the replaced sword's broke, use Quick Change to pull mine back?"

"Yep. Er, I mean, as long as you're fine with it."

"It's fine, I know I'll get my sword back. He'll recognize me, though, so I need a disguise…" Kirito opened his menu and started looking through his items.

"No, you're not wearing that dumb bandanna you had the other day. It wouldn't work, anyways."

"H-Hey, I never said anything about that… I like that bandanna, though…"

"Why?"

"... Moving on," Kirito said, oh-so-expertly changing the subject, "we'll need something that covers my face. I guess a full helmet would work, but we'd need an armor set to go with it so it doesn't look weird…"

"The helmet would mask your voice as well, so that's perfect. The basic plate armor you can buy at the shop isn't too expensive, right?"

"Yeah. I'll go get that now, and get ready. You two should find somewhere you can watch from without getting noticed." Kirito stood up and headed for the door.

I held up my hand to stop him. "Ahh, hold on a sec."

"Hm? What is it?"

"Should we contact Argo about this? All she knows is that we looked into the Legend Braves, right?"

"Mmh…" Kirito rubbed the back of his head in frustration. "We can meet up with her after I reveal myself to Nezha. I'll get going now."

* * *

After Kirito left to go buy the armor for his disguise, Asuna and I went back out to the plaza and looked around at the buildings. One building at the corner of the plaza caught our eye; it was near Nezha and provided a good view from a window on the second floor. Fortunately the building was empty, so we didn't have to worry about any NPCs or players bothering us. The room with the window even had a couple of chairs for us to sit in.

Once Kirito revealed his true identity to Nezha and retrieved his sword using Quick Change, Nezha shrivelled up pitifully, like he was trying to hide from the world. Asuna jumped down from the window, and Kirito told Nezha to stand up.

The three of them started a conversation, only parts of which I was able to pick up on over the noise in the plaza: Nezha planned to kill himself if anyone found him out, and that Asuna's and my cloaks, rather than hiding us, had become a sort of identifying mark. So much for people not noticing me.

I was about to jump down as well, but a I noticed a shadowy figure standing out against the evening light in the corner of my eye. On the rooftop of the building across the road from mine was a man in a rough black poncho. He was probably using Hiding, so I averted my gaze to prevent his Skill's effectiveness readout from dropping. I was surprised that I had even spotted him. He was watching the three on the ground intently, so he probably didn't notice his Hiding readout drop when I first looked at him.

I quietly walked through the building to another room, which had a balcony attached. This room was closer to the mysterious man, but because of his poncho I still couldn't see most of his face. I could see a small grip poking out of the side of his poncho—likely a dagger. It could be the Braves member Enkidu since he used a dagger according to Argo's information. I had no way of knowing, though.

 _What do I do… he's going to have high Agility, and possibly Sprint too, so if I jump over there he could still run and probably keep pace with me… I guess I have to give it a shot._

I stepped out onto the balcony and jumped with all my might. Immediately the man stepped back in surprise and quickly turned around to run. I landed on the spot where he had been standing and started chasing after him. The buildings in Taran, like in the rest of the towns of the second Floor, had flat roofs that were mostly the same height, so they were easy to run across.

I followed the man to the edge of Taran; he continued past the city's short wall and started running atop the trees of the forest that filled the upper edge of the Floor.

"Tch." I stopped at the edge of the last building. The guy was just as fast as me, and I didn't trust myself to run on top of the trees that well. Even if I was able to catch him, I wouldn't be able to get any answers out of him. I turned around and made my way back to the central plaza. Kirito and Asuna were nowhere in sight, so they had probably gone somewhere to sit down.

I walked into the inn, drawing a few stares from the players inside—my hood had fallen when I was running, not that it apparently made any difference at this point. I did my best to ignore them and looked around for Kirito and the other two. I couldn't spot them, so my next guess was Kirito's inn room.

I walked up the stairs and to Kirito's room; the three of them were there, and Argo had shown up as well. The four of them were currently gathered around a table, Nezha on one side and Kirito and Asuna on the other. Argo was leaning against the wall.

Kirito turned around to face me. "There you are. What the heck was that about?"

"I'll explain in a second. Could you fill me in on what I've missed, first?"

Kirito nodded. "Well, I'll skip the unimportant details... First of all, Nezha has a «FNC»."

A «FullDive Nonconformity». Put simply, the NerveGear wasn't interfacing with the user's brain properly. The issues brought on by it vary… at worst, the NerveGear would become completely unusable.

Although, considering our situation, that would actually be the best case.

"Ehh, for real? What's it causing?"

"... I-I have no depth perception," Nezha said, still somewhat confused by my sudden arrival.

"That's… fatal, if you were to try to fight. I see now why you became a blacksmith."

"Well, I did try to fight, at first. I used throwing weapons… that's how I have Quick Change. But it even makes smithing difficult." His voice was trembling slightly. "I just didn't want to be a burden to the others…"

"«Thrown Weapons», huh… well, I guess you wouldn't need to judge distance then. But keeping ammo stocked would be expensive… and once you run out, it's useless."

Nezha nodded.

Kirito leaned forwards slightly. "So, whose idea was the scam? Was it you, or your leader…?"

"Not me or Orlando-san… it was none of us."

"Then who...?"

"When we were talking about me becoming a smith one day, a… strange man came up to us. He had a weird way of talking, and he was wearing a black cloak, kind of like a poncho…"

"Ehh!?" I slammed my hands down on the table, startling the others. "A poncho? Are you sure?"

"Y-Yes, definitely."

"Damnit…"

Kirito looked at me, confused. "R-Rei, what's wrong?"

"The reason I took off running across the roofs was because a man in a black poncho was watching you three from there. I chased him to the edge of Taran but he kept running along the trees outside the town, which I wasn't willing to risk. I should've kept following him…"

Kirito sighed. "Nothing we can do about it now. Anyways, he's the one that came up with the scam? What did this guy want from you in return for telling you?"

"... That's the weirdest part… he didn't ask for anything."

"What? No cut of the profit, no nothing?"

"Nothing… When he showed the scam to us, we were really against it at first. But when we told him that, he just… laughed, like nothing mattered…"

"He just… laughed?"

Nezha nodded. "It had this bizarre, pleasant tone to it… After that, it really did seem like nothing mattered. What did he say… something like, 'If the game's system didn't want you to do something, then wouldn't it prevent you from doing it?'"

"That's crazy talk!" Asuna shouted as she shot up from her chair. "That's… that's like saying you could just do anything to get in the way of what others are doing, completely against any proper manners! And since Safe Areas mostly only cover towns—" She shut herself up once she realized what she was saying.

I walked over to the window and looked across the roofline of the plaza. The poncho man had definitely made himself scarce; he knew we were onto him now. The four continued their conversation behind me, but I was too lost in my thoughts to pay attention.

 _He explained a way to steal people's weapons, without any profit for himself… why? That doesn't benefit him at all. Depriving the players of their weapons will only make us stuck in here longer… is he just sowing discord for the sake of it? Does he have another purpose? Maybe he_ wants _to slow us down?_

As much as I hated to consider it, it wasn't impossible. Did that poncho-wearing man not want to return to the real world? Did he consider his life here to be better?

What if there were others like him?

A sudden bang from behind me startled me out of my thoughts; I turned around to find that Nezha had slammed his head on the table.

He was probably in despair. He had no way to atone for what he did… we were preventing him from killing himself, and since he would have sold off the victim's weapons there would be no way of recovering them. He definitely didn't have the Cor to pay them back, either.

Even apologizing was no good. While plenty of people would see reason, I knew many wouldn't by firsthand experience. And if they were told the truth, how would those players want to punish him?

Kirito suddenly spoke up. "Nezha."

Nezha slowly rose his head. "Huh?"

"What level are you?"

"U-Um… 10."

"Three Skill Slots… the base «Smithing» Skill and Thrown Weapons… what's the third Skill that you have?"

"«Inventory Expansion»… why?"

"Hmm…" Kirito opened his inventory and materialized an item—a large metal ring, its outer edge sharpened. "If I told you there was still a way you could fight, would you be willing to give up on smithing?"

* * *

 **Monday, December 12th, 2022, 10:00 A.M.**

"Kirito, your weapon Skill is at 100 now, right?" I turned around to walk backwards, so I could face him.

"Yeah."

"Aa-chan, what's yours at? I'm probably a bit behind both of you right now, since I haven't been grinding as much…"

"I got to 92 yesterday…"

"Guh…" Mine was currently 86. "Well, I'll worry about it when we get to the labyrinth. Wonder if they've gotten to the quest yet…"

The metal ring that Kirito had produced yesterday was a chakram. He had said that he had gotten it as a rare drop off of one of the tauruses in the labyrinth. It was a special thrown weapon that would return to the wielder after thrown, which was perfect for Nezha's situation. The kicker was that it required Martial Arts in addition to Thrown Weapons. Kirito's proposal yesterday was that Nezha would give up his smithing Skill, freeing up a Skill Slot for Martial Arts. Nezha had gladly accepted.

Earlier this morning, Argo had left to take Nezha to the Martial Arts quest. Argo was also going to go talk to the rest of the Braves, to explain the situation to them. We didn't have any reason to go with them, so instead we were headed for the labyrinth to get some more progress done.

"Ah, I just remembered. Kirito, have you ever tried equipping more than one weapon?" I asked. "I've come up with an idea since we've been dealing with equipment ownership lately."

"Eh, I tried dual wielding in the beta once. All I remember is that Sword Skills didn't work, so I gave up on it pretty quickly."

"Hm. I'm not that interested in dual wielding, especially since I can use Martial Arts anyways. Did you happen to get a «Numb Dagger» from the labyrinth?" The dagger in question was a rare drop from the tauruses of the labyrinth that had a small chance of stunning the target.

Kirito shook his head, but Asuna spoke up. "Oh, I think I got one of those…" She opened her inventory and scrolled through it. "Ah, here it is… I was actually planning to give it to you at some point, it seems useful."

She materialized the dagger and tossed it to me. It was noticeably lighter than my Wolfswipe, mostly due to its shorter length. I put it in my inventory and went to my equipment window to equip it to my right hand.

"Well, it does let me equip it…" I equipped the dagger and it appeared sheathed at the default position, on the left of my waist. I drew both daggers and took my usual stance, albeit a bit adjusted. It felt a little weird. "You said it didn't work, but I'll try to be sure… I'm going to try to use a Sword Skill, so stand back."

The two moved back to watch from a safe distance. I got in the position for a simple Slice, but it wouldn't activate. I tried it with the Numb Dagger as well, but since it was in my off-hand I wasn't sure if I had the starting motion right.

"Well, that's expected. Can I at least have both equipped with only one unsheathed…?"

I sheathed the Numb Dagger and tried to use Slice again, and it worked.

"Alright! That's perfect."

Out of curiosity, I tried the same with my right hand instead of my left. It was a bit difficult, but I managed to get the Skill to activate. I wasn't planning to train with my off-hand at the moment, but it would probably be a good idea to at some point.

"Hmm… well, for now I can do this." I moved the Numb Dagger so that it was sheathed at the back of my waist and accessible to my left hand.

Kirito finally understood what my goal was. "Ahh, I get it! That way, you can have a backup weapon, or one that you would use for a specific situation."

I nodded. "Exactly. You could do it with swords as well, but that would be difficult due to their size… this only really works well with daggers or any other small weapon. Heck, if it's possible to equip stuff by just materializing it and strapping it on, I could have a third dagger…"

I wouldn't be surprised if it was possible; the system granted a lot of leniency in its mechanics across the board, which was pretty necessary due to the nature of the game.

"Don't go too overboard."

"Yeah, whatever. Let's get going."

"Hmm…" Asuna lifted a finger to her chin. "You said you're a bit behind us on your weapon Skill, Rei-chan… Maybe it'd be good for you to take point today."

"Ick, against those tauruses? No way. I'll make up for it later."

Kirito chuckled. "Whatever you say. Don't blame me when you fall too far behind."

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 **Hey everyone! Once again, thanks for reading. The story hit a thousand views a while back, which is awesome. Onwards and upwards!**

 **Man, I'm sorry this hasn't gotten released sooner… I had said in the previous AN that the chapter was pretty much done, but it's gone through quite a few changes since then. On top of that, I've been putting off posting it, for a couple of reasons. Mostly laziness and me being too much of a perfectionist.**

 **Pointless excuses aside, it's here now, so all is good.**

 **That's all for now. Take care!**


	10. Chapter 9: Thunderstruck

**Wednesday, December 14th, 2022, 11:00 A.M.**

"Hmm… this is a problem."

I sighed as murmurs spread throughout the group of players in front of me. At the front of the group stood Kibaou and a man named Lind—the person I had gotten quite angry at after the first boss fight. Much to my displeasure, those two had become leaders of the majority of the clearing group. At current, they each had three full parties' worth of players present for the boss fight. Agil was at the head of a party with three other players, and all six of the Legend Braves were present. The group of heroically-named fighters had been surprisingly cooperative, according to Argo; upon hearing how much damage that their scam was doing, they quickly agreed to stop and do all that they could to make up for it. They were all happy to know that Nezha wouldn't feel like he was dead weight, as well.

Now, however, there was another problem to address. The game had a system for organizing raids, but it had a maximum of eight parties, which meant 48 people total. With Kirito, Asuna, and I included, we had 49.

Lind got everyone to quieten down and began speaking again. "Alright, well… I believe the solution is fairly clear," he said, looking at me pointedly.

"..." I sighed loudly. "Gah, yeah, yeah, alright. You two go join Agil's party. I'll just come along as a straggler."

"You sure, Rei?" Kirito asked, concerned. "You're already behind on xp, and if you're not in a party you won't get as much, plus it'll be harder for you to keep track of health…"

I pushed him towards Agil's group. "I'll. Be. Fine. I'm really not _that_ far behind. If you think it's really that bad I can go grind instead." I opened my menu and left our party, causing the two extra health bars in the corner of my vision to fade away. Despite what I said, I was going to tag along no matter what; I'd still get _some_ experience from the boss, plus regrouping with Kirito and Asuna on the next Floor would be a huge pain if I split off now.

"Okay, okay."

I looked back at Lind, my arms crossed. "Happy?"

He merely blinked in surprise; he probably hadn't expected that to go that smoothly. "Well, that certainly works. I have no arguments if you still want to come along without being in a party, but bear in mind it will be more dangerous."

I held myself back from making a snide retort; now wasn't the time to be starting another argument. I made my way over to Kirito and the others.

"Hey, Rei-san," Agil boomed. "Good to see you again. Sorry we can't do anything about the party situation."

I shook my head and craned my neck to look up at the bald giant. "It's fine. I'm lucky enough that Lind's even letting me tag along, though it's not like he could stop me I guess."

"It's not the last time something like this will happen, though," Kirito said. "Our party aside, sooner or later there's going to be more people in the clearing group than can fit in one raid. I just hope they can come to an agreement easily."

Lind clapped his hands together to quieten a few conversations that had sprung up throughout the raid group. "Alright, with that covered, we can move on to our strategy. I'm sure you all have gotten the guide again?"

The next part of the meeting went over stuff that I had already learned from Argo. Her initial premonition was correct: there was indeed a new boss for the Floor. But it was more complicated than just that.

In the beta, the main boss was Baran the General Taurus, but instead of multiple adds like Illfang had, there was a single sub-boss, named «Nato the Colonel Taurus». Now, there was _another_ cowman to deal with: «Asterius the Taurus King». Naturally, he was the new main boss, with Nato and Baran likely still present as sub-bosses.

Asterius was _way_ bigger than the other two, at 25 to 30 meters tall, and his attacks were all just upscaled versions of the other tauruses. Additionally, he had a paralyzing breath attack. His weak spot was his crown, probably causing him to stagger once it was hit. We were lucky to have Nezha here with us; he was the only person here that could hit the clown, unless someone felt stupid enough to climb the boss. It wasn't clear when during the fight Asterius would appear, though Argo, Kirito, and I all agreed that he probably wouldn't be present from the very start.

The tauruses attacks were fairly simple; they had big hammers, thus slow, smashy attacks. Their special Sword Skill attacks were straightforward as well: Nato's «Numbing Impact» and Baran's larger equivalent «Numbing Detonation» were shockwave attacks that inflicted a stun, and then a paralyze if a player gets hit with the attack again while still stunned. Having never seen Asterius's breath attack, we of course didn't know the specifics of how it worked, but it was fairly straightforward: don't stand in front of the giant cowman when he takes a big breath.

"Alright, my Dragon Knights will be parties A, B, and C. Kibaou's Liberation Squad will be D, E, and F. The Legend Braves will be G, and Agil's group will be H."

I sighed to myself at the names that had been established for Lind and Kibaou's groups. Couldn't they at least wait until they had actually done the guild creation quest?

"A through G will handle Baran, using the same method that we're used to. Once Asterius appears, if Baran isn't close to dead A to C will stay on Baran while D to G will move to Asterius—it's my understanding that one of the Legend Braves has a weapon critical to hitting Asterius's crown. H will handle Nato."

I had expected Lind to foist us onto the sub-boss; he probably didn't want Kirito and me to get a shot at the Last Attack Bonus. Though that decision might not make much of a difference depending on when Asterius spawned. Asuna moved forward a step, prepared to chew Lind out, but Kirito held her back with his arm. Instead Agil stepped forward and provided his usual cool-headed reply.

"It might just be one mob, but handling a whole mid-boss is a big ask for one party. There's also the fact that anything that's been covered could have changed."

"You have a good point. I do not want to repeat mistakes—if there is any sign that the bosses have changed past what we already know we will retreat as fast as we can and regroup to handle the situation better. As for Nato, I'm confident that your group can handle him, but if you need assistance be sure to tell us."

Agil nodded, approving of Lind's words. Kirito let out a breath that he had been holding in; that was as good as we were going to get from Lind. Asuna clicked her tongue.

"Okay… is there anything else anyone wants to add?"

Kibaou, who had been surprisingly silent this whole time, spoke up. "Yeah. All this stuff so far's been based on that strategy guide, right? That really good enough, info from someone that ain't even been in the boss chamber?"

"Well, it's the best we've got, isn't it?"

"Don' we have a couple people here that's actually fought these things already? Think it'd be good to hear if they've got anythin' to say."

Back up. Kibaou wanted advice from _us_? Since when did he listen to what beta testers had to say? His whole group, the Aincrad Liberation Squad, were anti-tester by principle. From their perspective, the greedy testers all ran ahead of everyone else to monopolize resources; conversely, they ensured that everyone had money and supplies evenly. At least, that was their concept.

Despite all of the evidence otherwise, I could spot nothing in the cactus-head's stare that indicated any of that hatred. He was just genuinely that concerned for the raid.

Neither of us fond of being at the center of attention, Kirito and I both stepped back a bit to avoid the 40-odd stares suddenly directed at us. I elbowed him in the side; better him do the talking than me.

Kirito cleared his throat. "Well, so far all of the mobs on this Floor have used the same attacks as before, so I'd expect the bosses to do the same… Like what's already been said, try to evade once they start their Numbing attacks, but most importantly, if you do get hit by it, you need to avoid getting hit by the attack again no matter what. From what I remember the stun lasts around three seconds. I don't know if any of you here have been paralyzed before… it completely restricts your movement, except for your left hand, which means you can't open your menu. It's only barely enough to let you drink a potion.

"Anyways, as long as you don't panic, the second attack should be easily avoidable. As for Asterius's breath attack…" He paused to think for a moment. "It shouldn't be very wide, otherwise it would be too powerful. The wind-up will be fairly noticeable, so try to move to the side. As long as you don't bunch up in one spot, the number hit by it should be minimal."

"... Well, y'all heard 'im. Don't be dumb and ya won't die."

"How eloquent," I mumbled under my breath.

"Anythin' else? If not, then we should get goin' already!"

* * *

Fortunately, the boss fight had started just as we had expected. Nato and Baran spawned as we opened the door; as of yet, Asterius was nowhere to be found. Agil's party (plus me) went to deal with Nato, while the rest of the raid fought Baran.

Like Lind had expected, we were handling Nato well; after about five minutes we had emptied the first of three health bars. Agil and his friends did a good job blocking all of Nato's attacks, and the damage that they were taking was slow enough that only one person had to switch out at a time to use a potion. All seven of us were able to get large bursts of damage in after Nato used his Numbing Impact due to it having a long recovery time.

"We can do this!" Asuna shouted to my right. Agil and the others roared in agreement.

I nodded. "Just don't get too confident. His Impacts will get faster once he hits his third health bar. It's likely that something else about his attacks will change as well, like with Illfang."

After attacking Nato again, I glanced over at the main group of the raid. They weren't doing horribly, but the boss was much more intimidating than Illfang ever was, and it showed. Baran stood taller than Illfang did, and he was much more muscular and aggressive. They players were definitely scared, but they were holding… mostly.

A number of players had been paralyzed already. Paralysis lasted for a full ten minutes; drinking a potion would speed up recovery but it wasn't instant. Another player got paralyzed as I watched, but his party members quickly pulled him to safety. To my surprise, there were about seven or eight players paralyzed—more than I had expected, and more than was safe.

"The main group isn't doing too great…" I mumbled.

Kirito nodded. "They'll be able to beat Baran at this rate, but what will happen when Asterius spawns?"

"Retreating will be really difficult with that many people paralyzed," Asuna said.

Lifting a person wasn't easy; even with the game's assistance, the boost we got from our Strength stats wasn't that significant yet, not to mention that most of the players here weren't heavily based in Strength, and those who were were already weighed down by their armor. Even Kirito and I together couldn't lift one person. Trying to carry over half a dozen people out of the boss room wouldn't go well.

"Kirito, could you go talk to Lind and Kibaou?" I asked. "They need to get their groups more focused on avoiding stuns."

"S-Sure." Kirito covered the hundred-meter gap to the main group, talked to the leaders, and was back in under a minute.

"So?"

"We'll pull back if one more person get paralyzed, but they said they've got the hang of it now. The paralyzed players should be back up by the time Asterius gets here."

We returned our focus to fighting Nato. After a few more attack rotations, we had gotten him to his final health bar. Nato let out a massive roar and started leaning backwards. He kept leaning and leaning, until one of his feet was hovering just off the ground. I had never seen an attack like that before; judging by Kirito's expression, he hadn't either.

"New attack!"

 _A heavier Numbing Impact? No, it doesn't look balanced right for that. Wait—_

"He's going to throw his hammer! Move!" Kirito shouted.

Nato started moving forwards, and I reacted a moment too late. I leapt to the side to try and dodge it; still, the hammer clipped my leg as it spun by. The hammer was quite large and heavy, so the impact was still enough to send me flying backwards; my health dropped by about a quarter, and I was inflicted with a stun as well. My health dropped a bit more after landing about twenty meters away. Fortunately, no one else was hit, and I was at least far enough away from Nato to be out of any danger.

"Rei, you okay!?" Kirito shouted.

I winced a bit as I struggled to sit up. Even with the system's pain absorption, there was still a little pain running through my leg. "I'm fine, I just need to drink a potion! Back off for a minute to watch his patterns, it doesn't look like he's moving to pick his hammer back up!"

After the stun wore off, I stood up and drank a health potion. Since my health hadn't dropped too far, I was able to rejoin the fight quickly.

Fortunately, there was little actual variance in Nato's new attacks; he attacked a bit faster, and he just punched instead of using his hammer. The general direction and range of the attacks were similar; he even used Numbing Impact like before. Once my health was back near full, I rejoined the fight; shortly afterwards, Nato's last health bar reached the yellow zone. Baran's last bar reached half at about the same time, as well.

Right as Baran's health reached half, the air towards the back of the boss chamber started shimmering. Asterius was spawning.

I heard Lind shout from across the chamber. "Asterius is spawning! Don't get distracted and let's get the small fry out of the way!"

Well, small relative to Asterius anyways.

The raid group shouted in agreement, but a lot of them looked quite shaken. Asterius hadn't finished spawning yet, so all that was visible was a thick shadowy cloud of polygons and particles. But it was _tall._ At least 25 meters, maybe 30, just like our information had told us. That information, however, didn't really help us to grasp how tall that _actually_ was until we saw it for ourselves. It really made me thankful that we had someone that could hit his crown without having to climb up there. I certainly didn't want to.

Speaking of which…

"Heyyy Kirito," I said, in between our attacks on Nato.

"... Something sounds wrong. What is it?"

"How long does paralysis last with a potion?"

"Mm… about a minute? It depends, though."

"And uh, how long do you think it is til Asterius makes it over here?"

As we spoke, Asterius finished spawning. The jet-black, bearded Taurus King reared black and let out a massive roar, electricity arcing along his body and between his numerous horns. With his stride length, crossing the 200-or-so meters to us wouldn't take long.

"U-Uh… less than that…"

"Well, see, that's a problem, because Nezha just got paralyzed… I don't know if it's because of Baran's berserk mode or if he was distracted by Asterius or what, but…"

"Weren't we supposed to retreat if this happened?..." Kirito glanced at the health bars of Nato and Baran. "Everyone! One more all-out attack and we can take down Nato! Don't worry about defending!" He charged the sub-boss, jumped, and struck him right in the horns with a Sword Skill; Nato staggered, giving the rest of us a chance to attack. We all unleashed our most powerful Skills on the Taurus General; just afterwards, the stagger wore off, and Nato prepared another Numbing Impact. Kirito, crazy as he was, managed to cancel out the attack with a Horizontal. We attacked again; I leapt up, using Nato's unused arm as a stepping stone, and drove my dagger straight into the top of his head, earning myself the Last Attack Bonus.

 _Hah, take that, Kirito. You won't get all the LAs this time._

I let my moment of gloating pass as I fell to the floor, and immediately started charging to Baran using what time we had left. The rest began to follow, but quickly stopped dead in their tracks.

"Rei, wait!" Kirito shouted.

I stopped running and looked back at him, confused. What was he so concerned about? I doubted even Lind would mind that much if we butted into the main fight n—

 _Oh. Ohhhhh._

It turned out that I overestimated how much time we had. I turned back to my right to see Asterius's massive—and now much closer—form rearing back slightly, his mouth wide open and his eyes aglow; moreover, those glowing eyes were pointed directly at me. After an instant of reflection, I understood; of course the king would first target the person that had killed his precious subordinate.

I turned the opposite direction and dashed as far as I could; I knew at this point that getting out of the width of the breath's reach was impossible, so the best I could do was reducing the damage by distancing myself.

My vision was filled with a white flash, and a thunderclap like an explosion roared in my ears. The sheer force of the lightning breath felt like a wall and blew me off of my feet. The border of my health gauge blinked a few times, and a new icon appeared next to it—paralysis. I had never experienced the debuff before… true to its name, my body was almost completely immobile; I could only barely move my left hand. I watched in horror as my health dropped like a stone; 20—40—60—almost 70 percent of it vanished in one go, sending me well into the red.

After the attack passed, Asuna rushed to drag me out of the way while Kirito and the rest went to attack Baran.

"Are you okay?" she asked after I finished drinking my potions.

The paralysis was a little difficult to talk through. "Well… as okay as I can be with a quarter of my health left. Still a little shell-shocked. That impact was nasty." With some difficulty, I turned to looked at the raid group. "Oh, Baran's down already. I should be fine over here, you go ahead and join back up with them. And uh, don't get too scared of the breath attack… I think it only hurt me so much because I was the only target of it."

Asuna nodded and ran off towards Asterius and the raid group. Nezha's paralysis ended not much longer afterwards, and from that point it was easy sailing. When Nezha hit Asterius's crown with his chakram, it staggered the boss for a few seconds much like how hitting any taurus's horns would do, except guaranteed instead of a random chance. Thanks to that he was able to mostly keep Asterius stunlocked, making the rest of the fight quite easy. It ended with no casualties, and with Kirito getting the LA Bonus (he got the one from Baran as well).

After the fight was over, I walked up to Asuna and Kirito.

"Hey, do you two have this covered? I don't really want to be around for this. Plus… I'm kind of sick of this boss room."

"I don't blame you," Kirito replied. "Yeah, it's fine. Argo should be right outside, waiting to come in, too."

"I'll be going ahead, then. I'll wait for you at the top of the stairs."

The reason I didn't want to stick around—my disdain for the room itself aside—was that Nezha and the Legend Braves were planning to come clean to the raid group about the weapon scam. People being as they are, it was bound to get kind of ugly. I had put up with that enough after Illfang; if conflict like this following the boss fight was going to become a pattern, I was going to make leaving first a habit.

With Kirito, Asuna, Agil, and Argo all there, it wouldn't get too out of hand. Much as I hated them, Kibaou and Lind weren't that stupid, either. But shouting was going to happen, and any at all was more than I wanted to put up with at the moment.

Therefore, I quietly made my way to the far end of the boss room and slipped through the door to the stairs.

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 **Hey everyone! Floor 2 Clear! Rei… almost died, but it's fiiiine.**

 **Boy oh boy, does this feel good. The second Floor has felt like such a burden to me, and I'm ready to move forwards. This chapter didn't come together as fast as I would have liked, but I got, uh, sidetracked… and basically didn't touch it for two weeks. So there's that. It gave me time to think about how I wanted to do the boss fight, at least.**

 **Man, I had a field day coming up with names for this chapter. So many song names… Had to go with the obvious one, though.**

 **Something that came to my mind as I was looking over the chapter: Aincrad is** _ **big.**_ **Yeah, that's obvious, I know, but come on. The boss room in this chapter alone is about 200 meters across, and probably about 40 meters tall to accommodate Asterius. I vaguely remember canon saying that each labyrinth (and thus the gap between each Floor) is 100 meters tall, but that honestly feels kind of low. Like, when you're five kilometers away from the edge, in the center of the Floor, how big does that gap look? Would it feel wide open or cramped? How much sunlight would that realistically let through? Come to think of it, do the Floors have any sort of curvature or are they completely flat? That would probably affect how things look a lot, if there wasn't anything to obscure your view of the Floor.**

 **Well, enough rambling; I'll see you when the next chapter gets released—if I end up being consistent it'll probably be done in three to four weeks. But who knows! Maybe I'll get into it and get it done really fast.**

 **Ha.**

 **That's all for now. Take care!**


	11. Chapter 10: Unexpected Encounters

**Wednesday, December 14th, 2022, 1:50 P.M.**

I stopped before the door at the top of the stairs, opting not to open it; from what I understood, once the door was opened the thirty or so minutes during which spawn rates were reduced would start ticking down.

I sighed and flopped down to sit against the door, grateful for the opportunity to finally rest. Now that I had some time to myself I could relax and think about what happened.

 _I… almost died. That's what happened._

I shuddered when I realized how easily it had happened; one mistake was all it took. I looked up at my health bar in the corner of my screen. That bar was everything that represented my existence here, the only thing that stood between me and death. It nearly disappeared, so simply, just like that. It could be played with so easily, no different from health in any other game.

It wasn't like I hadn't understood that our lives were really at risk up to this point, but this was the first time that I had experienced my health dropping so low. It made it really feel real. But somehow I still felt calm; somehow the fact that I had almost died wasn't actually bothering me that much. It felt as if it was just something that _happens_. And I hadn't—

 _Bam!_

"Nguh!"

A sudden impact and grunt to the left of me yanked me out of my thoughts. I saw Kirito in front of me, flailing his arms in attempt to keep his balance, then—

The door supporting my back opened, causing me to fall backwards, and then Kirito fell on top of me. "Gah! What the hell, Kirito?"

"Woah! Rei?" He scrambled to get off of me."S-Sorry, I was walking backwards and, um…"

I sat up and shook my head. "Whatever. Did everything go fine?"

"Eh… mostly. There was one person that claimed that someone had died because he lost his weapon, and people started getting riled up, but Lind calmed them down. There wasn't any evidence of it, anyways."

While Kirito and I talked, Asuna was busy marvelling at the Floor. It certainly was a sight to behold. All around us were gargantuan trees that towered just as high or even higher than Asterius, each of them at least a meter in diameter. They were surrounded across the forest floor by various types of foliage. Below our feet were rough dirt and stone pathways. Sunlight dappled the ground, filtered through the giant leaves of the trees overhead. The whole Floor was covered in trees the same as the ones that we saw around us. Even the door we had walked through was carved out of the base of a particularly massive tree.

We currently stood in the «Forest of Wavering Mists», which covered the whole southern half of the Floor. As its name implied, enshrouding the forest were clouds of mist that would vary in their intensity; at its worst, I wouldn't be able to even see my hand in front of me, but a patch that dense was rare to encounter. Thankfully, the mist wasn't present along the pathways or in the towns. The mist even pervaded into our maps, causing everything on them to appear hazy.

As I watched Asuna admire the scenery I wondered what had brought her into SAO in the first place. She had certainly never played an MMO before, and didn't seem to be much of a gamer in general.

I banished the thought for now; we had more important things to do, and even if we didn't I wasn't sure if she'd be comfortable talking about the real world. From what I had been told, most people weren't. I had never really understood that myself, but I had no reason to be rude about it.

"So, we ready to go?" I asked Kirito. "I'm about ready to be done for the day, but we should at least get that quest started."

"Oh, right… you feeling alright, after taking that hit?"

I sighed. "... Yeah, I'm fine… I mean, it was a bit of a… shock, but it's not like I've been fighting this past month thinking that I was invulnerable. Stuff like that is gonna happen, no matter how careful we are." I decided to change the subject. "Anyways, are we heading straight for the quest?"

"Hm, I should be okay on supplies for now. I told Asuna about the Floor on the way up… speaking of which—Asuna, do you need to restock on anything?"

Kirito's question interrupted her reverie. "Hm? Oh, I should have enough for a while yet. Why do you ask?"

"Well, if you're fine with it, we won't be heading to the first town for a while yet." Upon seeing the inquisitive look upon Asuna's face, he continued. "Er… part of it is that I'd rather leave opening the Gate to the others, but more importantly… see how the path splits about 30 meters down there?"

"Yes. I suppose one goes to the town and the other continues forwards?"

Kirito nodded. "Yep. We'll be taking the path on the left. It heads to the next town, but that's not what we're after. There's a different task for us to take care of." We started walking down the path in question.

"And?"

"Getting to the point," I butted in, "on this Floor is the start of the «Elf War» campaign quest. It contains numerous quests that span all the way through to the ninth Floor."

"The ninth!? That's really how long we'll be working on this?"

"Well, just view it as the replacement for our normal grinding. It just has a story attached now."

Asuna hummed in understanding. "That's simple enough, then. How do we find this quest?"

"Well…" Kirito trailed off. "How is your hearing, Asuna?"

"... The same as anyone else's? It's not like we use our actual ears to hear in this place."

"E-Er, that's true. Well, the quest starting point is somewhere in the forest. We need to listen for the sound of metal striking metal—two swords clashing."

"In the forest? Didn't you say it was dangerous to stray from the paths?"

"Um, when one of the monsters tries to lure you off or you're just wandering around, yeah. Once we hear where the quest is it should prevent us from getting lost, though."

"Should?"

"Worst comes to worst, I do have camping supplies."

"Ehh…" Asuna didn't seem thrilled by the concept. "Rei-chan, you said the campaign was called the Elf War, right? And since we're listening for the sounds of fighting, I'm guessing that we'll have to pick a side?"

"Exactly," I nodded. "I don't know if there are any major differences between the two sides, but… I didn't go far into the campaign in the beta, and more than that I think Kirito and I both picked the same side…"

"So our choice is already made, then."

"Er, pretty much."

"Shh! I think I heard it," Kirito whispered.

We stopped talking and focused on our hearing; sure enough, I heard the faint sounds of a sword fight coming from our right.

"Let's go."

Following an uneventful few minutes of walking through the varying mist, we found ourselves at the edge of a small clearing. The height of the forest's' trees served to make the already small open area feel even smaller. In the center of the clearing stood two humanoid figures locked in combat—a forest elf and a dark elf.

The pale-skinned forest elf stood about 180 centimeters tall, and wore ornate, well-polished armor. His sword and his hair held a shine similar to his equipment's. The dark elf was a few centimeters shorter; she seemed to be about as tall as Asuna and Kirito. Her dark-colored gear wasn't as flashy as the forest elf's, but it was obvious that it was just as strong.

As we approached, the two swung at each other with Sword Skills, the impact knocking them both backwards and shaking the foliage surrounding the clearing.

"Those are… the elves? They look just like players…" Asuna whispered.

"Yep," I nodded. "You can see the quest icons above their heads. The one our our left is a forest elf; the other is a dark elf. We'll make our choice by siding with one elf and fighting the other."

"I see. So, will we be siding with the dark elf?"

"... That obvious, huh?"

"Well, yes. Shall we get started, then?" Asuna moved to step out of our cover, but I quickly grabbed her arm.

"Woah woah woah, hold up there. There's one more thing: there is no way we'll beat the forest elf."

"... Eh?"

"You can tell by their gear… if the quest markers weren't there and they were hostile, their cursors would be very dark. Both of them are stronger than us."

Asuna stared at me in silence. I looked away, uncomfortable with the extended eye contact.

"Um, it's not much of a problem…" I already got close enough to it once today, like hell I'd start a quest if it meant almost dying again. "Once we reach half health our ally will use a special attack to defeat the other elf."

Kirito nodded. "She's right. Because of that, we shouldn't worry about attacking, and just focus on defending."

"Well, I wouldn't get too hung up about how we fight," I said, "but yeah. Don't worry about it."

Asuna blinked. "Um, okay…" she mumbled.

"Let's get started, then."

Kirito leapt out from our hiding spot to confront the two elves; Asuna and I followed. The elves immediately put some distance between themselves and glared at us. The dark elf confronted us first.

"Humans!? Cease your trespassing! You have no business here!"

"Leave this place! Our fight is none of your concern."

In lieu of responding, Kirito simply drew his sword and pointed it towards the forest elf. The elf's face contorted with rage. The quest marker changed to a cursor with an ominous red hue.

"So be it. If you wish to go against the forest elves, you shall die by my hand."

"I am your opponent! Do not ignore me!" The dark elf took the opportunity to strike while the forest elf was distracted, but the latter quickly turned and blocked the attack. Kirito moved forwards carefully, waiting for an opening.

"Hm…" Asuna let out a small hum; I looked over to her, and it looked like she was thinking about something. "Say, Rei-chan…"

"Hmm?"

"If the fight will end when we reach half of our health regardless, shouldn't we try our best to beat him anyways? And 'focusing on defending' like Kirito said would just make it take longer…"

"Well, when you put it like that… but we don't want to overexert ourselves or accidentally take a lethal attack…"

She didn't seem to hear the second half of my reply, and moved to join Kirito. I hesitated for a moment. I felt a little uncomfortable jumping into another fight, considering what I'd already been through earlier. I shook my head and moved to join them; there was no point in getting worked up over what had already passed.

* * *

It took _twenty_ minutes, but actually trying paid off; we managed to defeat the forest elf. All three of us just barely had our health in the green. Kirito was kind of taken aback when we started fighting more seriously, but he didn't try to stop us.

Aside from the fact that we had improved considerably compared to the beta, the main thing that allowed us to win was the dark elf herself. She adapted much better to fighting alongside us than I had expected; in the beta, the elf that one allied with mostly ignored the player, and just focused on attacking the enemy. Now, though, the dark elf cooperated and communicated with us quite clearly in order to make openings to attack. I had no way of knowing how much Kayaba had improved NPCs since the beta, but the dark elf was so lifelike it felt like she was hardly an NPC at all, at least in combat.

Kirito watched in disbelief as the polygons of the elf's death animation dispersed. He likely had a few questions running through his head, but I knew of one for sure: _What happens now?_

I sure didn't know. No one did. There was one part that I had forgotten to mention to Asuna earlier, mostly because it slipped my mind: the attack that the dark elf would have used once our health got low enough would have taken her own life as well as the forest elf's. But now she was standing right in front of us, alive and well. How that would affect the quest was anyone's guess.

The dark elf in question appeared to be just as confused as Kirito, clearly unsure of what exactly to do next. Hopefully we didn't just break her AI.

Fortunately, after a moment she moved; she stepped forward and picked up a small bag that had been left behind by the forest elf. After mumbling something to herself, she turned to face us, resolve returning to her eyes.

"I must thank the three of you," she said with a polite bow. "Due to your help, the Jade Key has been secured. Please come with me to our base camp; my commander will want to reward you, and possibly ask you for further help, should you be willing." A ? appeared above her head, showing that we had initiated the quest and made progress.

 _Well, that's something normal, so that's good._

I don't know what Kirito planned to do after this, but whatever it was it went sailing right out the window. Before Kirito or I could splutter out a response, Asuna replied for us.

"We'd be honored to."

All of us, our new companion included, hesitated for a moment. _Normally_ , NPCs would only understand clear, concise responses, like 'yes' or 'of course'. Asuna's answer might sound obvious to any actual person, but it wasn't exactly synonymous to a 'yes.'

However, apparently everything we had known about NPCs before was completely wrong, at least in this case; the dark elf nodded in response. "Follow me. The camp is at the south edge of the forest." Perhaps the range of phrases that NPCs understood had been broadened since the beta, but that just wasn't enough to write off how naturally she spoke and acted. The ? disappeared from above her head, and a new health bar joined the three already in my UI, labeled with her name and title—«Kizmel: Dark Elven Royal Guard». At the same time, a notification that we had initiated and made progress in the quest «The Jade Key» appeared in my vision.

Kizmel turned and strode to the edge of the clearing, and Asuna hurried after her. Kirito and I stood still for a few seconds, unsure of what to do. After sharing a quick glance I shrugged and caught up to the two women, Kirito hurrying to follow behind me.

We encountered a few mobs, but with Kizmel with us we made short work of them. The dark elf strode expertly through the mist as though it wasn't even in her vision, and within fifteen minutes numerous flags were visible through the gaps in the trees and mist.

"That was quick," I mumbled. I remembered having a hard time making it to the camp in the beta, and the fact that I had been playing by myself then hadn't helped.

Kizmel smiled proudly. "Well, you will not have had such an easy time without me."

As we approached the camp, the mists of the forest faded away. Curved stone walls stretched in either direction, the dark elf flags flying above them. In front of us stood two soldiers in heavy armor, guarding the gate to the camp. Kizmel nodded as she walked past the guards while Kirito, Asuna, and I followed behind her.

The camp was much larger than it had been before; it was close to fifty meters across, and instead of the small handful of tents I had expected, there were at least twenty within my vision, many of them so large that they felt like actual buildings. Dark elves clad in various kinds of clothing and armor bustled about the camp.

Kizmel led us to a tent towards the back of the camp. Upon entering, we were greeted by her commander. He was ecstatic to see that both Kizmel and the Jade Key had returned to the dark elves safely. In addition to a generous reward of Cor and experience, the three of us were allowed a choice from several pieces of equipment. None of the weapons or armor were any better than what we currently had, so Kirito took a ring that gave him a +1 boost to Strength, and Asuna and I both took an earring that gave +1 to Agility.

Unfortunately, the meeting didn't go perfectly for us. The next quest in the storyline was different from what it had been in the beta… but that was a problem for tomorrow. It was only mid-afternoon, but I'd had enough for one day. The boss fight and extended fight with the forest elf had drained me of most of my energy.

Kizmel turned to face us as we exited the tent, a small smile playing across her lips.

"Again, I must thank you three for all of your help. I trust that you will continue to assist us with our coming tasks?"

Kirito looked a little unsure about how to interact with the dark elf; after a moment, he nodded. "O-of course, we're happy to."

"Wonderful. Please let me know when you're ready… ah, come think of it, I do not know your names."

Kirito was stunned into silence. No NPC had ever asked for our names before.

"My name is Asuna."

"Er, um… my name is Kirito."

"I'm Rei."

It took Kizmel an attempt or two to get the pronunciations right, claiming that "human names are strange"; the game's language system probably had to fine-tune it via trial and error. At least she was doing _something_ that an NPC would do.

"Please, call me Kizmel. As I was saying before, we can depart for our next task whenever you feel ready to. If you need to return to the human settlement on this Floor, I can send you there with a charm; otherwise, you are welcome to stay in one of the tents here."

Kirito and I had both opted to use the dark elf camp as a base back in the beta; the tents were better than an inn room, and more than that it was free. It also cut down on travel time, since the camp was the main hub for the campaign quest on the Floor.

After looking at us, Asuna understood immediately what Kirito and I wanted to do. Exasperated, she replied, "Thank you. We'll stay here."

"Well, I cannot guarantee it is worth your thanks… There are no vacant tents right now, so we will have to share mine. It will be somewhat cramped for four people."

"Um…" Asuna trailed off.

"That's alright; we'd be happy to join you," I said.

Kizmel nodded. "I have some business to attend to here in the campgrounds; just come find me if you need anything. You will find my tent towards the back of the camp, two tents over from the commander's." The dark elf strode off and disappeared into one of the tents.

Asuna stood rooted to the spot, her face jumping between various different expressions. "I—you—... there's not any chance I could ask her to send me to town now, is there?"

"Well, no, but… it shouldn't be that bad," I answered. "Considering that the camp is much bigger than before, her tent likely will be, too. What are you so worked up for, anyways?"

Asuna heaved a huge sigh. "No, nevermind. Let's just go see the tent."

We made our way to Kizmel's tent. Kizmel must have come from a rich family or something, because her definition of 'cramped' was quite liberal. Forget four, her tent could hold eight people and not feel that cramped. The floor was coated with soft, thick furs, and in the center of the tent stood a small, strangely designed heater.

"Well, I wasn't wrong…" I mumbled, "but who calls this 'cramped'?"

Kirito shrugged and sat down in the center of the tent, next to the heater. After unequipping his sword and leather armor, he flopped backwards lazily. Asuna glared at him and started rolling him to one side of the tent with her boot, the black-clad pile of laziness offering no resistance.

"That's your quarter of the tent," she ordered, standing about half of the way back towards the heater, presumably where the border of his space was.

"Okay, okay."

"Jeez, if it's that big of an issue, I'll sleep between you two," I said.

"That aside," Asuna huffed, "what should we do now?"

"Well, nothing outside the camp…" I walked over to Kirito and kicked him, albeit lightly enough to not cause any damage; the camp wasn't a Safe Area. "Get up. We should go look around the camp, since it's so different from before."

"Gah, alright! What's with you two and kicking me?"

Our exploration proved fruitful; we were able to learn the general layout of the camp, as well as the locations of a few specific facilities, specifically the blacksmith, the dining tent, and (much to Asuna's delight) the bathing tent.

The three of us peeked into said bathing tent—fortunately unoccupied—and came to a slightly troublesome conclusion.

"There's only one bath," Asuna said.

"Yes," I said, "we saw it too. We can take turns, so it's not like it's a problem. One of us should probably stand guard here, unless you want a dark elf wandering in. I mean, they're just NPCs, but…" I shrugged.

"What about other players? And this isn't a Safe Area either, right?"

"No one else will make it to this point for a while. And besides that, the camp is instanced, so players aren't a problem." Asuna appeared to be confused by the word 'instanced'. Apparently we had missed that one when we went over that kind of thing a while back. "Er, basically, it's a location made specifically for a quest or the like… running into other players would be kind of awkward when you're on the same quest and need to talk to the same NPC, for example."

Asuna caught on quickly. "So… no other players can come into this camp? And so we're basically cut off from the rest of the Floor."

"Exactly. We can't be seen on the map either... but we're not stuck here or anything. Ah, and you're right about this not being a Safe Area…"

"I'd certainly feel more comfortable with one of you staying guard, then."

The sound of footsteps from behind me prompted me to turn around. "Ah, Kizmel."

"Greetings. I was planning on bathing before dinner; I take it that you three have the same idea. Feel free to join me if you like, though I would not suggest more than two try to fit at a time." Kizmel walked into the tent.

"Well, uh…" I pushed Asuna forward a bit. "If you're fine with it, you can go on ahead, Aa-chan. We can wait."

Asuna nodded and entered the bathing tent to join Kizmel.

"Um…" Kirito mumbled, "how long are we going to have to stand guard here?"

"Probably a while…" I could hear the faint sounds of splashing and chatting emerging from the gap between the tent's flaps. "Definitely a while."

* * *

 **Thursday, December 15th, 2022, 2:30 A.M.**

"Come on, Rei, get up."

"Nnghmhmh…"

I groggily pushed Kirito's hand away and forced myself to sit up. I took in my surroundings slowly. The heater in the center cast a dim glow upon the other three members of the party, all of them fully awake and equipped.

"... How about… next time you wake me up _before_ everyone's already ready?" I glanced at the clock in my HUD. "And maybe not at 2:30 in the morning?"

"Well, um… I have no defense for the first part, but we did go to sleep really early. Plus we likely won't run into anyone else at this time."

I sighed, stood up, and equipped my gear. "Alright. Still the same plan?"

Kirito nodded. We decided yesterday that we would split up to get our tasks done faster, since we didn't have to have everyone present at all times to make progress in the quest. Asuna and I would be heading northeast, in search of a lost scout somewhere between a small forest elf camp and the main human settlement on the Floor. Kirito and Kizmel were to go northeast, to a nest of the giant spiders that inhabited the floor. The nest was the original location for the quest during the beta; Kirito suspected that we'd have to go to the nest at some point regardless, so he decided it'd be best to go investigate it now.

Once I was ready, we left the tent. I opened my menu to check what supplies I had while we walked through the camp.

"Oh, it has been quite some time since I had last seen that charm," Kizmel remarked, probably in reference to my menu. "From what I understand, it is one of the last vestiges of magic that you humans have access to." The charms and magic that Kizmel spoke of must have been her way of justifying various game mechanics.

"Um…" I wasn't sure how to respond.

"Wait, magic?" Asuna asked, confused. "I thought that it didn't exist in Aincrad."

"Well, that is true, in a way," Kizmel said. "That charm of yours and the ones us elves have access to are nothing compared to the magic of old. Aside from us, most races completely lost their capabilities once they were torn away from the ground and into this castle; us elves are the only ones who have even preserved any knowledge from that time, as far as I am aware."

"Magic, huh…" I mumbled. We had never been provided with any background lore on Aincrad before, so this was new. "I guess that can give an explanation for a few things…"

We reached the camp's exit, prompting Kirito to speak up. "A-Anyways, we should get going now. Rei, I'll, uh…" he hesitated, probably because he was still a little uncomfortable around Kizmel. "I'll send you a message once we're done with the spider nest, since it won't get through while we're in there."

I nodded. "Got it."

Kirito and Kizmel disappeared into the mist-enshrouded trees.

"... You sure it's fine to leave Kizmel alone with him?"

"It's fine, Aa-chan. Kirito's not going to cause any problems like that."

"Alright."

We headed into the forest ourselves, facing closer to north than Kirito and Kizmel had.

"... Wait, couldn't we have had Kizmel send us to the town with a charm or something?"

Asuna sighed. "Well, it's too late now."

After a few minutes, we were attacked by a large spider, but I quickly overturned it with a kick, giving us an easy kill. After that, we returned to walking in silence for a while. Normally I'd be perfectly fine with not talking, but I actually had a few things I wanted to ask Asuna about.

We'd been in the same party for ten days now, but I had barely spent any time with Asuna outside of fighting mobs and questing. On top of that I had a habit of going off to do things by myself, so she had spent more time with Kirito than me. Because of that I wasn't completely sure what she would and wouldn't be comfortable with talking about when it came to more personal questions.

"Hey, is something bothering you?" Asuna asked out of the blue.

"Huh?"

"You're fidgeting a lot, like you're thinking too hard about something."

"Oh. Um, well… I was wondering earlier about what caused you to play SAO… you don't have to tell me if you feel uncomfortable talking about the real world or anything…"

Asuna looked away with a complicated look on her face. She remained silent for a minute or two before responding in a soft voice.

"... The game was actually my brother's. He got called to a meeting at the last minute… As he left he told me I could try out the game if I wanted to."

"And so you did."

Asuna nodded. "I don't really know why… I had never really had any interest in games before. It was just kind of a whim, I guess."

"Hell of a whim," I muttered.

Asuna grimaced. "I hope he doesn't feel guilty about it."

I patted her shoulder. "Well, _when_ we get out of here be sure to tell him it's not his fault."

A faint smile slowly rose to her face. "I will."

"Oh, if you ever want to talk about anything else from the real world, feel free to," I said. "I don't get touchy about that kind of stuff. I honestly don't understand why some people do."

"Yeah… There's a lot of things I've realized since the game started, and since I met you two…"

I was about to respond, but the sound of footsteps and jangling armor from in front of us stopped me in my tracks. Asuna stopped too, her gaze jerking up from the ground to search for the source of the sounds.

"Weird…" I mumbled. "Kirito said we shouldn't run into anyone this time of night, but I guess he was wrong."

After a moment a fully party of six players appeared from behind a bend in the path. They had a fairly well balanced party, with a mix of different weapons and both light and heavy armor. At the front stood a player that struck me as very strange. He wielded a shield and a one-handed axe, which was a weapon type that I had seen almost no one use. He wore thick scale armor, and the weirdest thing of all was that he wore a chainmail coif that completely covered his eyes. The thing looked like it absolutely killed visibility. A coif like that didn't even offer that much protection.

A player from the back of the group moved forwards to address us—one with orange cactus-styled hair.

"The hell're you two up to at this time'a night?" Kibaou asked with an accusing tone.

"You make it sound like we're doing something suspicious," I retorted. "We're going about a quest. What the hell're _you_ up to?"

"None o' yer business," Kibaou grunted. "Come to think of it, where's the beater boy?"

I blinked in confusion. "Uhh… 'beater'? Assuming you're referring to Kirito, he's at a different part of the Floor."

"Tch, whatever. Jus' stay outta our way, got it?" Kibaou walked past us, prompting the rest of his group to follow. The person in the coif had a smirk on his face, as if he had found something about the conversation amusing.

I sighed once they were out of earshot. "What a pain. Aa-chan, have you ever seen that guy that was at the front before? The one in the chain coif."

Asuna shook her head. "No, why?"

"I dunno, he just kinda weirded me out. I'll have to ask Argo about him later, I guess."

Aside from encountering mobs, the rest of our walk was uneventful. After another twenty minutes of walking, we made it to the main settlement of the floor, «Zumfut». Our quest required us to head west out of the city—I couldn't fathom why it was changed to be so far from the camp—but Asuna and I decided to stop in Zumfut to get some food. Once we finished eating, we left the town and got to work on the quest.

* * *

 **Hey everyone!**

 **This chapter ended up being a bit longer than usual. I was unsure at first on whether to include the part with just Rei and Asuna in this chapter or the next… After writing it out it came out to be 1500 extra words, so I decided a longer chapter wouldn't be that bad. Besides, it's not really that far outside the range I've been trying to stick to.**

 **I seem to have fallen into at least a somewhat consistent timeframe for my writing—as my life becomes centered around a more strict schedule here in about a month that trend will hopefully continue. I don't think that the amount of time I'll have available to spend writing will decrease much, but we'll see how it goes.**

 **That's all for now. Take care!**


	12. Chapter 11: Waterfall Quest

**Thursday, December 15th, 2022, 5:30 A.M.**

After completing our quest, Asuna and I returned to the dark elf camp at almost the exact same time as Kirito and Kizmel.

The latter two divulged on what they had accomplished first; long story short, they had entered the spider nest and defeated the nest's queen. To my surprise, they had encountered Kibaou's group as well—however, through the use of a powerful invisibility cloak that Kizmel happened to possess, they weren't faced with a confrontation like us.

"Oh, duh…" I grumbled. "Kibaou and his group were out so late because they wanted to get the guild creation quest done as fast as possible, right?"

Kirito nodded. "That's what I had figured. Did you run into them too?"

"Yeah…"

Kibaou's activities weren't anything that would cause worry, so I decided to move the conversation forward. I produced a silver leaf-shaped insignia from my inventory, one that looked identical to the fastener of Kizmel's cape. "We found this and a few feathers near the forest elf camp."

Kizmel's face fell, her eyes dark. "This certainly belongs to the scout you were searching for. Those feathers no doubt mean that one of the forest elves' falconers was responsible."

That much I had been able to tell myself when we first found the insignia. The «Forest Elven Falconers» were the nastiest mobs on the Floor. While they weren't the first case of flying mobs, they were the first mobs that used their flying capabilities to the fullest—between the falconer and the falcon itself, fighting them could be more than a handful. There was no doubt that the scout we were searching for was killed.

"The scout was kin to the commander…" Kizmel said softly. "If you do not mind, I would prefer not to intrude upon your report."

"I understand," Kirito said. "What will you do for now?"

"I will go rest in my tent. Please, if you need my assistance, do not hesitate to ask." With a soft chime, Kizmel's health bar disappeared from my HUD, and she made her way to her tent at the other end of the camp.

We entered the commander's tent and I handed him the insignia. I thought I saw the commander's face twinge slightly, but other than that he showed no emotion. After giving him the insignia a new quest appeared in my vision, which luckily for us hadn't changed like the first quest had. Kirito immediately produced a fang from the spider queen they had defeated and placed it on the commander's table, thus completing the quest almost instantly. After receiving our rewards, we exited the tent.

"Follow me," Kirito said. "I have something I want to show you."

Asuna looked at me questioningly. I shrugged my shoulders; I was as clueless as her. Kirito led us to the space directly behind the commander's tent. The only things present there were a small tree and some wooden markers in the ground. As Kirito led us to one of the markers, I realized that they were graves.

The marker in question had only one word engraved into its surface: 'Tilnel'.

"Tilnel?" I mumbled. The rhythm of the name sounded similar to Kizmel. "If these are graves, was… this person related to Kizmel?"

Kirito nodded and crouched down in front of the marker. "Kizmel told me that her sister was killed by a falconer during an ambush. Tilnel was a herbalist, not a knight like Kizmel, so she only had a dagger to defend herself."

"I see…" Asuna mumbled.

I didn't say anything. The fact that we had never met this Tilnel before her death likely meant that she had never actually existed in the first place. It was just a memory planted in Kizmel to give her more character. Had I heard of it from Kizmel herself, though, I probably would have had a hard time viewing it that way.

"Kizmel was prepared to die fighting that forest elf. And she likely would've if you two hadn't fought with everything you had. It... made me feel guilty that I had just sat back and waited for the event to complete itself." Kirito stood up. "We should always be fighting as hard as we can, no matter what."

After a respectful moment of silence we returned to the rest of the camp. I tuned out the sounds of conversation and trailed a few steps behind Kirito and Asuna, following them mindlessly. I started paying attention again just in time to witness Asuna deliver a punch to Kirito's gut—albeit lightly enough to avoid causing actual damage. He probably said something stupid. She stormed off and Kirito and I followed at a safe distance.

"What was that about?" I asked.

"Um… she got mad at me when I told her there wasn't any sort of failure state when creating a new weapon…"

"... I don't follow."

"Well, she said I should have told her earlier. I guess… she got mad because she got nervous about it for no reason."

I shrugged. "Punch deserved, then. I take it we're going to the blacksmith?"

Kirito nodded.

Soon we walked up to the blacksmith tent; manning it was a lanky dark elf who had his hair tied back. If it wasn't for the apron, gloves, and large hammer in his hand, he would have been totally unidentifiable as a blacksmith. He was working on some nondescript piece of metal and thus paid us no mind when we stepped up to his tent.

"Excuse me, could you forge a new weapon for me, please?" Asuna asked politely, her anger from earlier either dissipated or hidden.

The dark elf turned to look at her, muttered a small grunt, and turned back to his work. A menu appeared in front of Asuna.

She hesitated for a second then turned away from the elf to look at Kirito, taken aback by the smith's attitude. "Are you _sure_ this will be fine?"

Kirito nodded. Regardless of how rude the smith might have been, he was our best option for the time being.

Asuna turned back to the menu and tapped its visibility button, allowing Kirito and I to see what it contained. Before using the menu any further, however, Asuna removed the sheath from her waist. I wasn't sure how attached Asuna had gotten to her weapon, but it seemed like she had spent a lot of time making this decision. After taking one last long look at her Wind Fleuret, she held the sword out to the smith.

"Convert this sword into ingots, please."

The elf simply held out his hand, so Asuna placed the sheathed sword in it. The elf unsheathed and inspected the sword; after a few moments, he carefully placed it in the furnace behind him. The strangely-colored flames of the furnace flared up, and the sword started to glow. After a few moments, it had morphed into a rectangular ingot.

Once the ingot had cooled, the elf removed it from the furnace and handed it back to Asuna. She then filled out the options in her menu, selecting the weapon type, base and extra materials, and the core of the weapon—the silvery ingot that had just been produced. After a deep breath, she confirmed the final prompt that appeared in front of the first menu, removing all the materials and some Cor from her inventory.

The ingot and two leather bags materialized on the smith's workbench. He took the bags and threw them unceremoniously into the furnace. Kirito grumbled uncomfortably, probably himself starting to doubt how the smith's attitude would affect the end result. Once the materials had all melted down, causing the fire to turn a brilliant bright white, the elf placed the ingot into the furnace.

After a few seconds, the smith took the now-glowing ingot out of the furnace and placed it on his anvil. Asuna took a step closer to Kirito.

The elf started hitting the ingot with his hammer at a slow and steady pace. The general strength of a weapon could be roughly judged by how many hits the ingot took before forming; my dagger, for example, had taken thirty-two strikes to forge. I was kind of unsure whether that trend would continue for long; if it did, weapons forged by master smiths on higher Floors would take thousands of hits. Realistic, perhaps, but possibly too time consuming even for an MMO. Regardless, we relaxed once the smith had reached twenty hits—that confirmed that the sword would be at least as good as the Wind Fleuret before it.

But unexpectedly, he kept going. Twenty-five, thirty… it eclipsed my weapon and the smith only stopped upon the fortieth hit. The glowing ingot reformed itself into the shape of a beautiful silver rapier. The smith took it in his hands, muttered something, nodded, and then placed it in a gray sheath selected from a rack behind him. He then handed the completed sword to Asuna, who stepped away from Kirito to take it.

Asuna bowed. "Thank you."

The elf grunted in response. Asuna moved to equip the sword, but Kirito stopped her and dragged us away from the tent.

"What's your problem?" Asuna asked with a frown. "I got the sword just fine."

"Look, can I just… look at it for a second?"

Reluctantly Asuna handed over her new sword. Kirito's eyes widened when it hit his palms—it must have been much heavier than its appearance let on. He tapped on the sword to bring up its status window. Asuna and I leaned over to inspect the window as well. Named «Chivalric Rapier», Asuna's new sword had fifteen possible upgrade attempts.

"F-Fifteen!?" Kirito shouted in shock.

The number of upgrade attempts was another quick way to gauge a weapon's power without going over its other stats; put simply, the Chivalric Rapier was much more powerful than Kirito's Anneal Blade, which only had eight attempts. This sword could have easily come from two or three Floors above us.

"What's wrong?" Asuna asked.

"Nothing. More like… this sword is amazing," Kirito said

"Amazing?"

"Super-amazing."

With a soft giggle, Asuna attached the sheath of her new rapier to her belt. "I'll be sure to treasure it, then."

Kirito nodded. "It's much stronger than either of our weapons… In fact, it's probably the most powerful weapon in the game right now."

Asuna looked at the new sword on her waist in surprise. "Really…?"

"Really. And now would be a good time to put some upgrades on it, too," I said. "I've been meaning to max out my dagger too."

"We don't have materials for that, though?"

I grinned and materialized a leather bag with a cow-shaped brand on the side of it. "This was the LA bonus from Colonel Nato." I opened up the bag and pulled out a small black metal plank about 10 centimeters long. "Just one of these will boost the upgrade chance of any weapon below +10 to its max, for any stat of your choice."

Kirito and Asuna stared at me blankly.

"You should have said that earlier!" they shouted.

* * *

After returning to the blacksmith, every single upgrade was successful; Kirito and I both maxed out our weapons at +8 and +10 respectively, and Asuna brought her new rapier up to +5. There were still six of the planks left over, so I returned the bag to my inventory to be used another time.

Next we had to figure out what to make of the Chivalric Rapier. The sword was brokenly powerful for the Floor we were on. There were too many variables to make a good judgement about it ourselves, so we decided to ask Kizmel about the smith.

He was very skilled but fickle, as we had experienced. Once in a blue moon he would produce a sword on the level of Asuna's new rapier, but if someone was pushy with their order or had ill intentions he would refuse outright. Because of that we decided that it'd be best to avoid telling the main group about the smith, at least for the time being.

After our talk with Kizmel and a breakfast of oatmeal (which apparently Kirito had never had before), we left her tent and started to head for the camp's exit. Kirito and Asuna left the camp and started to make their way to Zumfut; I told them I'd catch up with them in a few minutes, because I wanted to take another look around the camp. It was entirely possible that there was a new quest hidden away somewhere considering that the camp was bigger than before.

I went to the commander first to ask him if there were any extra tasks that we could take on, but he didn't have anything specific. He did however suggest speaking with the oldest elf in the camp, who could be found just one tent over from the commander's.

"Even for his age, he's quite studious," the commander told me. "He does most of our bookkeeping. Were he not on deployment here, he would doubtless spend most of his free time in the Grand Archive." I'd never heard of the Grand Archive before, but it was likely a large library of some sort, probably in the dark elves' castle on the ninth Floor.

I thanked the commander and made my way over to the next tent. The commander had made it sound like this elf was an old man, but he barely looked older than the commander. I was expecting a long-winded story, but the elf's response was brisk, relatively speaking.

"I am grateful for your help, as I have not been able to convince the commander to spare any troops for my needs. I will spare you the boring details, as I imagine an adventurer such as yourself has no patience for them—I am currently conducting some research into past civilizations, and I believe the ridge that bisects this Floor will contain some artifacts or ruins of note. This particular group of people was quite in-tune with nature, so any areas that are flourishing in life will be worth your time."

I actually was somewhat interested in those 'boring details,' but I didn't have the time to ask about them. I gave a bow and a brief reply before exiting the tent. As I walked towards the camp's exit I quickly checked the quest's information—the small description held no more information than what I had been told, but the quest's name stopped me dead in my tracks. With the name it had, I could only think of one place on the Floor where it could want me to go.

"Ohh, I am not gonna like this…"

* * *

 **Friday, December 16th, 2022, 3 P.M.**

Unfortunately, my prediction was spot on.

On the western edge of the Floor, there was a waterfall that fell from the ridge into a large lake, which in turn fed into the river that flowed through the forest and around Zumfut.

I pointed to the top of the waterfall and looked at my three companions—Kizmel had accompanied us today. " _That's_ where we need to go," I sighed. Although it was hard to see from the ground, there was some greenery visible at the top of the waterfall, which was without a doubt the place I was looking for. "That, or there's some cave full of plants that we don't know about."

"Well…" Kirito mumbled while rifling through his menu, "I kinda doubt that."

"I agree," Kizmel said. "I have heard rumors before of ruins and an oasis atop the ridge, much like what we can see from here."

"That's definitely it, then."

"How are we supposed to get up there, though?" Asuna asked.

"I'll bet you 500 Cor that there's a pathway behind the waterfall," I said.

"I'll… pass on that."

I sighed. "Let's just get this over with."

I started walking along the edge of the lake, and the others followed behind me. The lake's edge reached all the way to the ridge, but it only came up to our ankles at the edge, so we were able to walk to the waterfall fairly easily.

We walked through a small gap behind the waterfall to find a small cave hidden behind it. There was a tunnel on the left side of the cave, but that was the only other exit. The far end of the cave was mostly barren, but showed some signs that someone had inhabited it before. There were a few random materials and scraps lying around, and there was a charred patch of ground next to the back wall surrounded by stones.

"It looks like someone used to camp out here…" I mumbled.

Asuna shivered, cold from the waterfall's spray. "How the heck could they have a fire going in here?" she asked.

Kizmel walked up to the makeshift firepit and examined it more closely. "I see no way of telling who made this… a random adventurer is a possibility, but it appears more likely to me that forest elves were here. If that is true, we can expect to encounter them above. We should tread carefully."

Kirito shrugged. "We'll find out soon enough. Let's go." He disappeared into the tunnel, prompting the rest of us to follow him. The tunnel was fairly dark and wound in a slow upward spiral. The floor was slippery, but it was a gentle slope so it wasn't too dangerous. Thankfully, the tunnel was narrow enough that it was pretty much guaranteed to not have any mobs in it.

After a minute or two of walking, we were greeted at the end of the tunnel by blue-tinted light and the roar of the waterfall. We emerged from the tunnel onto a small plateau, with the waterfall to our right and a pathway that meandered its way up a cliff face to our left before entering another tunnel near the top. Kirito and Asuna walked over to the edge to peer down at the bottom of the waterfall.

I felt the color drain from my face as I looked up the cliff. My voice probably jumped by about an octave. "W-We have to go up _that_? Isn't it kind of dangerous?"

Kizmel nodded calmly. "That is true, doubly so due to the waterfall. It would be best for us to stay to the far side of the path, away from the edge."

Asuna stepped away from the edge of the plateau and turned to face me. "Well, I don't think it's that bad. Besides, is there any other way up?"

"I… I guess not…" I muttered.

* * *

"This view is amazing! I can see the whole Floor from here!"

I found it difficult to share in Asuna's jubilance. "Um, yeah, it is…"

The ascent had been a little rough for me. Along most of the path there was a short lip on the edge so that we couldn't simply slip off and fall all the way down, but it didn't do much to block the view. I made sure to stick to the side of the path next to the wall, with Kizmel between myself and the edge of the path. On top of that, the whole way up was slippery due to the spray from the waterfall and I slipped on a step, which caused me to fall on my face. For a moment I had thought that I was about to fall all the way back down the path or even off the edge.

I hastily made my way further into the oasis-like area that we had found at the top of the waterfall in order to remove myself from any sort of reminder of how high up we were.

The source of the water was tucked away in a small cave near the highest point of the ridge, totally inaccessible. There were three bridges in relatively pristine condition that spanned the wide body of water that fed the waterfall. Two of them were rope bridges, but the narrower area of the waterway had a stone bridge above it. Luscious greenery ran along the banks, more tropical in variety than what could be found in the forests below. The plant life on the far bank was dense enough to block the view of anything beyond where the bridges landed.

There were ruins scattered about; they were rather sparse near the water, but as the plants gave way to the barren stone of the ridge the ruins became more dense. There were even some structures made of stone that were still fully intact. But there was nothing in any condition near that of the bridges, which sent up a red flag.

Asuna, Kirito, and Kizmel had caught up to me, and had noticed the same discrepancy.

"That's a little suspicious…" I mumbled. "What do you think?"

"Kizmel's guess from earlier is probably right," Asuna said. "If there are forest elves up here, they would probably want to keep the bridges that they use safe."

"Well, why don't we look at the ruins on this side first? They probably won't be on this side."

The ruins were mostly empty, but towards the back of them we found a small cave that descended a short way into the ridge. At the end of the cave was a small stash hidden under some plants and rubble. It contained an old necklace and surprisingly a handful of Cor. The necklace was unidentifiable to us; we probably needed to take it to the elf back at the camp, although my quest log didn't update when I picked it up. After our search, we made our way back to the water's edge and crossed the stone bridge. It was safer than the rope bridges, and there were no indications of any dangers at the other end.

We quietly made our way into the small break in the trees in front of us, wary of any enemies that might spot us. Soon I was able to hear faint voices above the roar of the waterfall. We moved forwards as silently as we could, and through the foliage I was able to spot a couple of forest elves, proving our earlier assumption to be correct. It was hard to tell, but it looked like there was a camp set up in the distance behind them.

Immediately I got a popup on the left side of my vision—a quest update. We were to return to the dark elf camp and report what we had seen to the commander immediately.

We backed away from the elves to a safer distance.

"Hey, Kizmel…" Kirito whispered, "would it be possible for you to sneak past them with your cloak?"

"It is too risky, as elves are not as easily fooled by it. If we must, I believe it would be best to search for an unguarded area instead."

We did as Kizmel suggested, and we split up temporarily to cover more ground. Kizmel and I headed towards the north side of the ridge. Most of the trees and foliage were too dense to risk trying to pass through them, since any elves on the other side would hear us immediately. At the edge of the ridge, though, the greenery thinned out and the path that it opened up appeared to be unguarded.

I was hesitant to go further along the path, as it was quite close to the edge. There was also the possibility that there were more elves further in, and here we wouldn't be able to rely on the trees for cover as much.

"Not very fond of heights, I take it?" Kizmel asked. Her sudden question caught me off-guard.

"N-No, not really." I turned around to face her. "I mean, climbing up here wasn't too unbearable—besides falling on my face—since I had the wall on one side of me and you on the other, but I can't handle being so close to a drop like that."

Over the past day-and-a-half I had grown used to interacting with Kizmel. Yesterday, when Kirito showed us Tilnel's grave I felt kind of lost, but now I understood what he was getting at. The way she spoke and acted was simply too humanlike compared to a normal NPC. Because of that, trying to think of her as an NPC really just made things harder; if it wasn't for her pointy ears and yellow cursor she'd be almost indistinguishable from a player. Treating her as such made working with her feel natural, though notably we tended to avoid using videogame terms around her.

That didn't mean there weren't any issues or questions raised, but I didn't have the luxury to worry about it for the time being.

Kizmel chuckled softly. "Well, I hope that it is not too debilitating for you; this Floor will not be the last with such heights."

I grimaced. "Yeah… anyways, what should we do now? Try to investigate the forest elf camp?"

Kizmel shook her head. "Honestly, it is likely too dangerous, especially during the day. It would be better to return to the commander and possibly organize a party more suited to the task, since we do know of a safer way in. It is also possible there is already some intel on their activities up here that we were unaware of. At the very least, we should reconvene with Kirito-san and Asuna-san."

I paused for a moment before nodding. "That's good with me."

Kizmel turned on her heel and strode off in the direction we came.

I sighed and quietly followed Kizmel back to the bridge. I was not looking forward to the descent.

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 **Hey everyone.**

 **Man, I sure shoved my foot in my mouth on this one, huh? Over three months since I posted the previous chapter. Yeaaaah. I feel like I can't apologize enough.**

 **If you don't mind me making a few excuses:**

 **I can't say that I haven't had the time to work on writing; I certainly have. It's just that that time went towards some other hobbies and SoLaD kinda got put on the backburner. That's changed in the past couple weeks, but as one would expect I can't guarantee it'll stay that way. Making statements about the future is sketchy, as I have learned so well.**

 **Also, I have a bad habit of making tiny changes when a chapter is about done and putting off posting it for another day because of that. And I'll do it over and over, and all of a sudden a whole week's gone by, with little progress. It only really gets that bad when I've been working on a chapter for as long as this one, though.**

 **And maaan, the time has just absolutely flown by. It turns out that actually having stuff to do every day makes a huge difference in that regard.**

 **Anyways, a chapter happened up there.**

 **That's all for today. Maybe actually hopefully the next one will come sooner this time.**

 **Take care!**


	13. Chapter 12: Death in Name

**Friday, December 16th, 2022, 5 P.M.**

We made our way back to the dark elf camp with ease. Asuna led the way with her powerful Chivalric Rapier; with Kizmel right behind her, Kirito and I barely lifted a finger. I never even drew my dagger, though that was more because I was working on levelling my Martial Arts.

The quest was completed after we reported to the old elf and the commander. I was kind of put off, since we had to go all the way up the ridge just to do almost nothing and come back down, but there wasn't much to do about it. At least I had found _something_ up there.

Speaking of which, it was kind of strange. I brought the necklace I had found to the old elf, but if he did know anything about it he wasn't letting on. All that he told me was that it had vague magical properties and that it would be wise to hold on to it. The necklace didn't have any actual stats, so I simply stowed it away in my inventory.

After initiating the next quest in the campaign, we left the commander's tent.

Kirito turned towards me. "You good to keep going?"

"I guess, long as we don't have to go up that ridge again."

Kirito shook his head. "Don't see why we would."

We started to make our way to the camp's exit. I stopped suddenly, prompting the other three to look back at me in confusion. "Actually, could we get some food? I feel like I haven't eaten all day."

Asuna rubbed her stomach. "Now that you say it, I actually feel really hungry."

"There should be some food prepared in the dining tent by now," Kizmel said.

I nodded. "Let's go, then."

* * *

 **Sunday, December 18th, 2022, 11:45 P.M.**

A soft bump to my shoulder, a muttered swear, and after a few moments the light rustling of cloth prompted me to slowly open my eyes. I sat up just in time to catch someone exiting the tent.

I looked around groggily; Asuna and Kizmel were both still fast asleep in the center of the tent. However, the bedroll to my left was empty.

What was Kirito up to?

I quietly got up and made my way out of the tent. Kirito's silhouette was barely visible in the darkness ahead of me. I quickly put on my gear and tried my best to follow him. His cursor was at the edge of my vision, and while he would still show up on my map it was hard to keep track of him because of how hazy it was.

The Forest of Wavering Mists was dangerous at night in particular; it was hard enough to see during the day, but once darkness fell the mist would thicken and turn what little lighting there was into a dark gray void. Fortunately we were fairly familiar with the terrain by this point.

We had spent the past couple of days doing campaign quests. After paying our respects to the fallen scout, we went out to search for another missing scout, but this time our search was successful.

Well, sort of; the scout turned out to be a forest elf spy that was using a disguise charm. The forest elf attempted to steal the Jade Key, but failed thanks to Kirito and I keeping an eye on him. He managed to escape, however we were able to track him to a camp—the same camp that Asuna and I had gone near when we were searching for the first scout.

The next quest was «Infiltration», in which our goal was to steal some plans from said forest elf camp. However, we had to put the the questing on hold for a while since the field boss that blocked the path to the upper half of the Floor was tackled earlier today. It went smoothly—no one died, and unsurprisingly Kirito got the LA Bonus. Following the defeat of the field boss we made our way back to the dark elf camp where we bathed, ate, and then slept. Which brought me to following Kirito in the middle of the night.

Eventually Kirito made his way to the stairway back down to the second Floor. I stopped at a spot where the forest and mist were dense; I'd be surprised if Kirito hadn't noticed me by now, but I gave myself the benefit of the doubt.

"A few seconds late, ain't'cha, Kii-bou?" I wasn't able to see her through the mist, but the nasally, teasing voice provided no doubt that it was Argo.

"No excuse, I guess."

"I see," Argo said.

"Look, I don't mean to rush you, but do you have any information on what I asked about?" Kirito responded.

"Always so impatient." I heard footsteps, probably Argo's. "Well… first off, mind if our uninvited guest reveals themselves?"

"Huh?"

 _Took long enough._ I clicked my tongue and stepped out of the mists. Kirito whirled around in shock, his hand already on his way to his sword.

"What the—oh, Rei? When…?"

I shook my head. "What, seriously? You _actually_ didn't notice that I was following you?"

Kirito lowered his hand and relaxed. "No… I mean, you didn't get up when I accidentally bumped you, so I didn't really think about it…"

"Well, it doesn't matter. I actually had something that I was meaning to ask Argo about, anyways."

Argo grinned. "I'll always take extra business. Anywho, Kii-bou?"

"Yeah, yeah." Kirito pulled a coin out of his pocket and flicked it towards Argo, who caught it deftly between her fingers.

"Only one new member in the DKB since we started this Floor. Name's Morte, uses a 1H sword like yours, always wears a chain coif. Don't got much else on 'im."

DKB was the acronym for the name of Lind's guild, the Dragon Knights Brigade. He and Kibaou had formally announced the official names of their guilds, the Dragon Knights Brigade and the Aincrad Liberation Squad, at the most recent meeting. They had gone by those names for a while already, but they had finalized them now that they were almost done with the guild creation quest.

"Morte…" I mumbled. "That's some… awful name choice."

"Hm? Is it?" Kirito looked at me, confused. "It sounds like some kind of candy to me."

I sighed in exasperation. "Candy? No way. Well, it's… what is it, Portuguese? It means 'death'."

Argo put her hands behind her head. "Sounds right ta' me."

"Mm…" I froze when I registered the rest of what Argo had listed off. A chain coif? That was what the guy in Kibaou's group was wearing the other day. Sure, it was probably a coincidence, but two different people wearing such worthless, bizarre headgear was enough to me to warrant suspicion. "Wait, hold on a sec'. Kirito, where did you see this guy?" I asked.

"A few days ago, when you stayed behind at the camp to check for quests. We ran into the DKB while they were starting the campaign quest."

"Not the ALS? And he had a sword?"

Kirito looked at me skeptically. He was right to do so; without any context, I wasn't making any sense. "Yeah… what are you getting at?"

"Do you remember anything else at all about what he looked like?"

"Um…" Kirito put his hands on top of his head and closed his eyes. "He was wearing… scalemail armor, I think? And his sword was probably an Anneal Blade." His hands dropped. "That's all I can remember."

"Okay, um…" I couldn't help but think that _something_ was going on. I turned to face the rat-like info dealer. "Argo?"

"That's my name _._ "

"Do you know of anyone that matches Morte's description, but is in the ALS and uses a one-handed axe instead?"

Kirito and Argo both stared at me blankly.

Argo thought for a second. "... No, I don't. And I ain't gonna charge ya for that, cause that's… really weird. I oughta look into it myself."

Argo not knowing was a bad sign. "... Please, do that. And let me know if you find anything."

"Will do. If that's all, I need'ta get going," Argo said. Kirito and I didn't say anything to stop her, so she silently vanished into the mist.

I turned to face Kirito. "I'm guessing you were planning to do the quest? You wouldn't get up at midnight just to have a chat with Argo."

Kirito raised his hands in defeat. "It's easier to do at night. And having all of us along would just make it harder."

"Well, you're not wrong, but I'm coming with you anyways."

"I wasn't planning to stop you."

I shrugged in response. "That aside, you should have seen the guy I asked Argo about, too."

"Eh?"

"You ran into Kibaou's group in the spider den, right? He was with them."

"I guess… yeah, that does sound familiar actually…"

"Aa-chan didn't say anything about him either?"

"Nope. Are you saying he's the same person that I saw with the DKB?"

"Not necessarily, but it's _weird_. I couldn't imagine one person wearing such a crappy piece of gear like that coif, let alone two. And since Argo's never heard of him, I can't help but think..."

"... Well, I figured he was at least a beta tester. It didn't seem like Lind was getting his info on the quest from Argo, at least."

I sighed. "Well, whatever."

We headed back into the misty forest and made our way to the forest elf camp. Once we reached the camp, Kirito led me around to the back side of it, right next to the river that flowed through the Floor. From this side, the camp was sitting atop a cliff about 7 or 8 meters high, with roots sticking out of the rock in places obviously meant for climbing. The river was narrow and shallow here; it was only a few centimeters deep and a few meters across.

"Isn't trying to do this quest through stealth a lot more risky…?" I mumbled.

"Well, yeah, but…" Kirito said, "I dunno. For some reason it just doesn't feel… right to fight through all the elves like I did in the beta."

"That's… fair, I guess."

"Well, I wouldn't—" Kirito suddenly cut himself off, and whirled around to scan over a line of trees nearby.

"What's wrong?"

"It felt like… someone was watching us," Kirito whispered.

"Eh?" I looked around, but my Searching didn't pick anything up. Kirito's Searching was a higher level than mine, though.

Kirito's gaze was fixed on one spot on the far bank of the river, and after a few seconds a figure appeared from out of the shadows. The first thing I noticed was its cursor—it was _green_. A player.

The player was wearing scalemail armor, with gloves and boots that looked like they were made out of a similar material. A longsword was sheathed on his hip, and he wore a metal chain coif on his head that looked like it would ruin visibility.

"Yeah, no, he's the same guy," I mumbled. He looked _exactly_ the same save for his weapon.

I briefly wondered why he was helping both guilds at the same time, but that thought could be saved for later. More importantly, what was he doing _here_?

If we had just encountered each other by coincidence, I would have spotted him before he spotted us since I had the «Distance Bonus» Skill mod for my Searching—or at the very least, we would have seen each other at about the same time if he had the same mod. In either case, it was pretty unlikely that he could have hidden before I would have seen him. Kirito probably had the Distance Bonus mod as well, and clearly he was more attentive than me.

That meant the more likely option was that he had already been hiding here. As if he _knew_ we would be here.

Whoever he was, this Morte guy meant trouble.

Kirito had probably reached the same conclusion. His glare looked like it could rip Morte in half.

A voice much different from what I was expecting emerged from Morte's mouth. "Well, shoot! Guess you guys spotted me, huh?" It was a bright, almost sing-songy tone, much out of place in the current mood; but at the same time, it sounded… flat, somehow. His voice was barely quiet enough to not garner the attention of the elves in the camp above.

"You two are pretty good. It takes a lot of skill to spot me at this distance, and in this kind of darkness, too. And it was just on a hunch too, riiight?" Morte's way of speaking had an obnoxious theatricality to it.

This guy was getting on my nerves real fast. I clenched my fists and decided to let Kirito do the talking.

"... You're Morte, right?" Kirito asked. "From the DKB?"

"A-ha! You've got some sharp info there, for someone who keeps his distance from the main group! Mhmm, Morte's the name. You might not want to wear it out, ha-haa!" His response danced around Kirito's second question without really answering it.

"I take it we won't need to introduce ourselves."

"Oh, come, now!" Morte swayed from side to side. "When you put it like that, Kirito, it sounds like you're implying something!"

"It seems pretty clear to me that you were expecting us to pass through here."

Morte raised his hands in feigned defeat. "Ha-ha, you caught me. But if I'm to be honest, I wasn't prepared for you to bring one of your girlfriends along. Ohh… I apologize, perhaps I'm interrupting something?"

I felt quite tempted to jump across the river and punch that smarmy grin right off of Morte's face, but not wanting to be marked as a criminal by the system held me back. Nothing about his tone was directly impolite per se, but it just… pissed me off.

Kirito ignored Morte's inciting. "Did someone put you up to this? Lind, maybe?"

"Ha-ha, Lind's not a bad guess, I'll give you that. But naaah, this was all me. It's not like Lind would know about this spot for this quest; he's no beater, after all."

My curiosity overtook my anger for a moment, and I finally spoke up. "Beater… that's—" I quickly cut myself off. It was probably best to not say anything about my encounter with Kibaou the other day, as Morte might pick up on the fact that I remembered him. If he hadn't already. "... I've heard someone else use that word. What the hell is it? It's certainly not the English word, anyway."

Morte spread out his arms. "I don't mind to educate. Y'see, it's a, uh…" his dumb smile faltered. "A porta-something? A combination of two words."

I crossed my arms. "A portmanteau."

Morte snapped his fingers. "Yep, that! It's a portmanteau of ' _beta_ ' and ' _cheater_ '. Came around from that mess of a boss fight on the first Floor. It's a dumb name, but I like that, ha-ha."

I'd had enough of this. "Okay, can we get to the point? You're here for a reason, clearly."

"Impatient, I see. Welllll, alright. Here's the deal: all I want is for you to not do this quest."

After a moment of stunned silence, Kirito shrugged his shoulders. "We're not going to do that, you should know that. Why should it matter to you anyways? Isn't the DKB on the other side of the campaign?"

I wondered the same thing. Nothing we completed on our side of the campaign should have any effect on the other side. The closest separate parties ever interacted during the campaign was if their quests happened to be in the same area… maybe they had one here?

Morte put his hands on his hips and shook his head, which caused his chain coif to jingle. "Well, y'see, it _does_ matter to me. 'Course, I can't tell you _why_ , otherwise I'd have no reason to be hiding, right?"

Kirito narrowed his eyes. "So… you intend to stop us by force?"

"Oh, no no no, that'd be a bad idea. The last thing I want to do is turn my cursor orange. That'd be a quick way to get kicked out of the guild I just joined, yeah?" Morte said. "There's nothing wrong about me singing a lil' song though, right? I always enjoyed the music inside the towns, it's a shame there's not BGM everywhere."

Morte's statement seemed completely out of the blue, but it held a thinly-veiled menace. He was planning to wake up the forest elves while we infiltrated the camp. Even with both of us, fighting off and escaping from a dozen elves would be difficult.

"You want to MPK us…" Kirito mumbled.

Morte grinned innocently. "Oh no, I wouldn't do that. I don't doubt that you two could slip away from them regardless, right? All I ask is that you wait for a day."

"A day…" I shook my head. "What difference does it make?"

Morte held a finger over his lips. "Nope, can't say! But it'll become clear if you just wait."

It was frustrating. What the hell was his goal? Considering the circumstances around him it likely had something to do with the DKB or the ALS, but I couldn't fathom what.

"And what if we refuse?" Kirito asked.

Morte lowered his hand. "Hmm, well… I've got a better idea. Why don't we settle this dispute the old-fashioned way? Y'know, like we would in the beta."

"... And that would be…"

"C'mon, Kirito, you're _killing_ me! Use that head of yours!" Morte's fingers traced along the pommel of the sword at his waist. It was clear that he was proposing a duel.

"... You're joking."

"Oh no, I'm always serious."

I grit my teeth. Now we _needed_ to figure out what Morte was trying to accomplish; whatever it was, it clearly wasn't any good. The location of this camp changed every time someone completed its quest, so that must have been the reason why Morte was trying to delay us. But what did that get him other than wasted time? He was obviously a beta tester; he'd be better off just checking the other known spots for the camp once he needed to do the quest. I'd seen him working with both the ALS and the DKB, but if it was out of sheer altruism it didn't add up.

"Well, whaddaya say?" Morte rocked back and forth on his feet. "I don't mind waiting all night for a response, but I imagine you two are just oh-so busy, ha-haa."

"... We can die even in a duel, you know," Kirito said.

"Goodness, Kirito, if you insist…" Morte shook his head and laughed. "Ha-ha! Of course not, right? A full duel would be super dangerous. No, I was thinking a half-finish duel would be perfect. Much safer, right?"

"If safety's a problem, we should just use first-strike," I said. A half-finish duel, which was won when your opponent was reduced to 50% of their health, was still awfully dangerous. A first-strike duel was won upon the first clean hit, which was… still dangerous, but much less so. Back in the beta most only ever used the full duel option, but by now it was clear why the other two even existed in the first place.

"Correct you are! But I'm no good with that. A first-strike duel is just too flimsy, y'see? One hit and it's over. It's so easy to win just on a fluke—not that good for making a decision, is it? A half-duel's much better, and it only takes a couple minutes. You've got at least that much to spare, right?"

 _Considering how much you want to delay us, every minute seems pretty important to me right now_. From the way Morte was acting it seemed like he was happy to keep us away from the quest for as long as he could. It probably didn't need to be a full day—just an hour or even a few more minutes might be enough for what Morte wanted. But if it was just to help one of the guilds, this was a massive waste of effort on Morte's part.

"What's to guarantee that you won't interfere with us if you lose?" Kirito asked.

"Oh, that'd be horribly dirty of me, I wouldn't _dare_ do something like that." Morte leaned to one side. "But if I do lose, I'd be at 50% HP at most, right? It'd be pretty dangerous for me to make any noise while I'm healing up—who knows what else is out in this forest, ha-ha!"

Kirito didn't look too convinced. "Okay… One last thing. As it stands, we don't have anything to gain from this. If you lose, you have to tell us why you're doing this."

"... Sure! Can't say it'll make sense to you, though. Anywho, which one of you wants to duel?"

Helping the guilds was out… Was it more malicious? But outside of causing us trouble I didn't see how this would accomplish anything. Maybe I was overthinking it. Regardless of his reasons, Morte was actively obstructing us from completing our goal.

If that was the case, then did he just have a grudge? I certainly didn't remember either of us doing anything to prompt something like this.

No, maybe he just wanted to stop SAO from being cleared _at all_. I couldn't bear the thought; I didn't want to believe it. But it fit his actions.

I quickly opened my menu and sent a message to Kirito asking him what side of the campaign the ALS was on. Morte would probably know that I was keeping something from him, but that was better than risking Morte overhearing me.

"I… don't know," Kirito mumbled. "Same as us, if I had to guess."

 _Opposing sides, huh..._

"... Let me duel him," I said.

He turned to look at me. "You sure?"

"Yeah. I've just got a bad feeling about this. Besides, you'd probably have a better chance at slipping away without him noticing and doing the quest while we're fighting. But we need to hurry, he's obviously up to something."

"It's not like he'd be able to stop either of us from leaving once the duel starts, but okay…"

"I'd rather not take the risk. We don't know what he's up to." I turned back to face Morte. "Let's go upstream, there's a more open spot up there."

"Okie-dokie!" Morte put his hands behind his head and spun on his heel. "Man, if I gotta be totally honest I was hoping to duel with Kirito. I mean, he's _the_ Kirito, the best player from the beta, y'know? But I suppose you're just as amazing as he is, Rei-san, ha-haa!"

"Tch."

"Ooh! Hostile."

After a few moments of walking we came upon the open area I had mentioned. Morte turned back to face us. He swiped at the air, prompting his menu to open in front of him. The faint glow from his menu made the smile on his face look that much more creepy. It sent shivers down my spine.

"Allllright," Morte said, "it's showtime."

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 **Hey everyone! Once again I barely eke out a chapter at the end of the year.**

 **To those of you that celebrate it, I hope you've had a Merry Christmas!**

 **I don't have much to say today. I probably could have posted this chapter earlier this month, but finals, the holidays, and being a lazy butt kept me busy. On top of that, I pretty much finished the whole next chapter to see if it would work well as just one double-length chapter, but as you can see I decided against doing that. Posting this now gives me a bit of a time buffer, plus I still have some changes to consider as of yet.**

 **See you guys in 2018!**

 **Take care, and have a great New Year!**


	14. Chapter 13: Death in Act

**Monday, December 19th, 2022, 12:20 A.M.**

Morte quickly maneuvered through his menu and sent me a duel request. A small window popped up in front of me; the first line of text that caught my eye read 「Morte has challenged you to a 1v1 duel. Do you accept?」.

Stupidly, I hadn't thought to check his cursor yet; the text in front of me proved that Morte was actually his name.

Below that line of text were three check boxes, with the one for the half-finish mode already selected. At the bottom were the buttons to accept or deny the duel.

I glanced up at Morte; he was relaxed as ever, one hand on his hip and the other hanging limply at his side. Again I was struck by how strange his coif was; wearing that thing could only be a hinderance, but it was too late to ask him about it now. I looked back down at the window and pressed the accept button. The window switched to a timer that was counting down from sixty seconds and moved off to the side of my vision. A larger timer floated in the air between myself and Morte, positioned a few meters above the river. Kirito backed away to give us space, but he didn't leave.

I looked back at Morte before doing anything else; when he didn't move at all I realized that getting into a combat stance too quickly would give away information.

Then I felt like a complete moron. What the hell was I getting myself into? I was going into this fairly blind, and with barely any hesitation. More than that, I realized I was at a severe disadvantage.

Morte was the one that initiated everything, aside from us spotting him… unless he planned for us to do that, too. His request, the suggestion of a duel, the duel prompt itself… Morte had been on the leading foot the whole time. He _knew_ what he was doing, and what his goal was. Me? Not so much.

Since Morte had suggested a duel he was likely quite comfortable with fighting other players. Who knows how much he'd dueled in the beta… or even since the beginning of this death trap. There were definitely things he knew about duelling that I didn't. I had barely any PvP experience from the beta. Moreover, it was clear that Morte knew who I was, so he likely knew my fighting style as well.

My one saving grace was that he likely didn't know I had Martial Arts. Hell, it was possible he didn't know about it at all, since the rumor about it during the beta came about pretty late. If I was lucky, he also wasn't aware that I knew he had a second weapon skill, but that one was up in the air.

I glanced at the timer. 45 seconds remaining. In the beta, that timer was just a nuisance, a tedium that preceded the clashing of Sword Skills. Now it was an opportunity to observe.

My gaze returned to Morte. He stood straight but lazily, swaying back and forth slightly as if he was getting impatient. Nothing about his attitude gave me anything useful. On the other hand, he could probably tell how tense I was.

 _Observe, observe… What next?_ The moonlight was fairly bright tonight, so vision wouldn't be too much of an issue. The river between us was about 4 or 5 meters across and only a few centimeters deep; easy enough to stand in, but still possible to slip in and lose my footing. There were also rocks poking up out of the water in places. It wouldn't hinder me too much, but I'd rather keep my feet out of the water if I could help it.

So crossing the river on foot was out. I could possibly make it across using Lunge or even with just a strong jump, but I'd be cutting it close. I was probably better off waiting for Morte to cross. I held little doubt that he'd use Sonic Leap to jump across; a few meters was nothing for that Skill. I briefly felt a little envious that sword users got access to such a good leaping Skill so early on.

20 seconds left. The surrounding terrain was mostly hazard-free save for a few rocks and boulders, and some roots at the tree line. The main point of contention would be the river. It'd be good if I could draw Morte further away from the camp, but I wouldn't focus on that.

I once again returned my gaze to Morte, and that was where it remained for the rest of the countdown. The timer started to beep once it reached ten seconds.

Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Morte finally drew his sword. It had a smooth sheen to it, so it was likely fully upgraded. I left my dagger sheathed for the moment; the time it took for me to draw it was negligible. After another second passed, he lazily held his blade to a high stance, and it started to glow light green. Sonic Leap, like I had thought. Was his goal to leap just as the countdown ended?

But he'd started the Skill too early. By then, he'll have to either have jumped already or cancelled the Skill. Hitting me before the countdown ended would be a criminal offense, and the duel would be cancelled immediately.

Wait. How long would it take for him to jump across the river? Again, Morte was likely quite familiar with duelling. If his goal was to hit me _right_ as the countdown ended…

The timer ticked down to one. Morte smirked, and launched off the ground. No more time to think.

I leapt to the side as hard as I could, unsheathing my dagger as I went. A sound was emitted by the timer when it reached zero and changed to a time limit for the duel, but both of us were past caring by this point.

Morte landed on the ground hard, his obnoxious smirk gone from his face and his sword sunk into the ground. At the same time I leapt back towards him and scored an easy slash along his back as I passed. Morte hissed in annoyance as his health dropped a few percent. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

Morte slashed at me once he had freed his sword after his post-motion delay ended. I stepped to the side to avoid the slash, and I felt my feet graze the water. He continued to press his attack, and I opted to keep evading instead of parrying with my dagger. I'd get more benefit out of waiting to exploit an overextended swing than trying to parry and counterattack with a lighter weapon.

His attacks were concise and controlled; Morte wasted no effort in aiming for critical points, though to be honest any hit against me would be devastating since I had so little armor. His swings were a strange combination of short slashes and thrusts.

" _Shryaaa!_ "

Morte shouted in rage and attacked with a full-on thrust. I easily sidestepped to the left of the attack and slashed at his right side, scoring another few points of damage. Unfortunately it was minimal, since his armor was putting up a good front against my attacks. After that I quickly put some distance between us. There was no trace of a grin left on Morte's face now, just anger.

I belatedly realized that I had the advantage of being left-handed against a right-handed fighter. It was a small advantage, but one I needed to keep in mind. Even Morte, the duelling expert that he likely was, probably didn't have much experience fighting against a lefty. On top of that, the fact that I had to get so much closer to attack than he did might have been throwing him off slightly.

I darted forwards again, deciding that it was best to not give Morte an opportunity to do something. He resumed his swinging thrusts as he backed away, but I was able to deflect and evade them as I continued to push forward. After a few steps Morte's boots hit the water.

He continued a few steps backwards into the water, and kicked at it with his right foot. His kick sent up a screen of water between us. I retreated, wary of whatever trick Morte might be pulling.

At the same time, a small flash of light refracted through the water. It was the game menu.

 _He's switching to his axe!_

He must have dropped his sword to be able to use his menu. I rushed towards him and started a Sword Skill in an attempt to get a good hit in.

I heard a soft whooshing sound come from where Morte was standing; he must have had Quick Change since there was no other way to equip a weapon that quickly. His large metal round shield was already in his hand and raised in front of him. He blocked my Skill and the impact sent us both staggering backwards.

I struggled to recover my footing, as did Morte. His new weapon was behind his back where I had no vision of it, but I had no doubt it was his one-handed axe.

Now it was all about who could recover first. I expected that Morte would counterattack the moment he was able to. I had mostly seen through his game plan; his strange swinging thrusts from before were intended to lure me into thinking he'd only use thrusting style attacks, but now with his axe he'd be using wide, sweeping attacks instead. Since the axe would deliver a heavier hit than a sword, it was a good strategy as long as the opponent was unaware. Unfortunately, I barely knew anything about one-handed axe Sword Skills as it was a rather underused weapon type.

I was still stumbling backwards a bit, but Morte had already recovered his footing; since I had a lighter build the impact had had more effect on me. His right arm started to move. Not a Sword Skill, but it looked like it'd still be a heavy swing. As I saw the axe's blade peek out from behind him I realized that it would be better to move with my interia, rather than against it.

I slammed my foot into the water hard and leapt into a backflip. It was enough to clear Morte's swing, but my foot had slipped slightly and I hadn't gone as far backwards as I'd hoped. Thankfully, though, it was enough; Morte spun around to try to hit me with a second strike, but I had landed just outside of his range.

Once I landed I leapt backwards to give myself some space; the backflip had left me a little disoriented, so I didn't want to give Morte an easy attack.

To my surprise, Morte didn't pursue me and instead remained motionless where he stood in the water. He appeared as relaxed as ever, save for the expression on his face that gave away his frustration. For a few seconds neither of us moved a virtual muscle.

I moved first. I dashed forwards and activated Lunge. It was a risky move; I was gambling on the speed of Morte's weapon, hoping that he wouldn't be able to counterattack with his slow axe fast enough. There was also the chance I could slip in the water. At the very least, I was hoping that he would be slow enough for me to dodge after my Skill wore off.

My judgement, however, wasn't so accurate. Morte moved much faster than I had expected; not only did he avoid my attack, but he got a hit in on me as well, although it didn't connect perfectly. Even so, it took around 15-20% of my health and caused me to lose my already unstable footing.

Morte twisted along with his attack's follow-through and his axe became bathed in a blood-red glow.

" _Shayaaa!_ "

With an ungodly-sounding scream, Morte spun his axe around twice at a ridiculous speed. The first strike hit me in the chest and the second just below in the stomach. I was lucky enough for the first hit to push me back some before the second landed which saved me from a few points of damage.

Still, the force from the heavy Skill sent me backwards and off of my feet entirely. I crashed on the ground in a heap, and I watched my health drop to around fifty-five percent. More than that, an icon below my health bar told me that the Skill had inflicted a short stun effect.

The impact left me feeling dizzy and out of breath. I looked around groggily; I couldn't spot Kirito, so hopefully he had already left to do the quest. I heard Morte's boots splashing in the water as he approached, his axe and shield held carelessly at his sides.

After three seconds, the stun effect faded and I was able to stand up. I thought that Morte would use the chance to finish the duel, but instead he just commented on his attack.

"Woow! Still in the green even after that? You're tougher than I thought, especially for an Agility type. This axe can even cut plate armor, you know."

"What are you doing…?"

"Ha-haa, come on now, it'd be lame if the duel ended with just a little tap! We gotta make this exciting, you know? Besides that, who knows what kind of trick you might be hiding up your sleeve right now, hm?"

"Tch." I stood up and regained my balance. Morte stood barely two meters in front of me, his axe and shield still limp in his hands. His relaxed posture wasn't out of laziness, but confidence.

He had the right to be confident, too. So far he'd mostly outclassed me in strategy—unsurprisingly, he seemed particularly keen on deception and trickery. Obviously he was ahead in the amount of damage that he'd done as well. Speaking of which, the fact that he had left me at just above fifty percent worried me. That axe of his was damn heavy, and it did a lot of damage…

Wait… was Morte really all that surprised that I was still above 50%? I didn't take the full force of his Sword Skill earlier, and it took over a quarter of my health. It wouldn't be too far-fetched for him to have an attack heavier than that. Sure, the duel ended when one of us reached half health, but since we weren't in a safe area any leftover damage would still happen. If he had an attack that could deal enough damage…

I would die.

I'd die, and Morte would face no consequences for it since his attack would still be considered part of the duel. I didn't know what motives he might have had, but Morte wanted to kill me.

I swallowed nervously and gripped my dagger more tightly. Morte noticed my discomfort, and a nasty leer crept across his face.

I raised my dagger to ward away my nerves. Morte responded in kind by readying his axe and shield. At that moment, an idea formed in my head. If he wanted to use deception, then I would too.

"Iiit's showtime!" Morte shouted. His talkativeness was really getting on my nerves.

I circled around to Morte's left to keep on the same side as his shield. It was the conventional tactic for dealing with shield-users; the shield was cover for him, but it was also cover for me. That, along with my own trump card, was my one out. It wasn't a guaranteed victory by any stretch, but it was my best option.

Blocking an attack wasn't just about holding the shield up in front of you; to parry the attack properly and cause the opponent to stagger, you had to react with force. It was all about timing. Morte would be holding his shield loosely until that exact moment, and I sought to abuse that fact.

Morte kept his shield facing me, as it was in his best interest to use it to make an opening to attack. I held my dagger out wide and charged forward for an attack, with an added yell for maximum attention.

"Haaah!"

Morte prepared his shield. It hid most of his upper body from my view—and most of mine from his. Additionally, most of his attention would be on my dagger. If this went the way I hoped, he wouldn't notice my right hand at all, which was currently covered in a red glow. It was «Flash Blow», the fastest Martial Arts Sword Skill.

My quick punch struck Morte's shield and sent it flying out of his hand. Since Flash Blow had next to no ending delay I kept moving forwards and slashed with my dagger. Morte did his best to avoid it, and all I accomplished was a small gash across his chest. The shield landed off somewhere in the river.

Getting his shield out of the way was a benefit in itself; it was simply that much easier for me to land an attack. Besides that, hopefully Morte wasn't used to using his axe without a shield. But just getting rid of his shield probably wasn't enough; I had to keep going.

I jumped, and at the same time Morte counterattacked—he thrust with the pommel of his axe, which I wasn't prepared for. Fortunately it barely grazed me since I was already moving out of the way. My jump carried me high enough for me to deliver a strong kick to the back of Morte's head. He was totally unprepared and faceplanted into the dirt.

I used the force from my kick to help myself to spin around in the air just enough for me to be in the right position to hit him with a Sword Skill. I raised my dagger above my head with both hands and it became suffused with a bluish-green glow.

The Skill pulled me to the ground with an invisible force; with the addition of gravity, Dive had a high potential for damage. It was also rather unique in that the direction that the blade was pointing actually didn't matter; when I had used the Skill against Illfang I had oriented it as a slash, but here I had the dagger pointed down to stab. Despite all that, since it required being in the air it generally went unused. I landed on top of Morte as he was standing back up, which drove him back into the ground. At the same time, my dagger sunk into his shoulder at a weak point in his armor.

In addition to my kick and Sword Skill, both of his impacts with the ground had done damage. I could only hope that it was enough. I watched his health bar drop—eighty, seventy, sixty percent. It stopped just barely above halfway.

Morte pushed me off of him, and we both hastily got up off the ground. I absently swiped my dagger at him as we were both trying to get up.

A loud buzzer sounded in my ears. The timer floating above the river and at the side of my vision stopped.

I had won.

Morte calmly brushed himself off—I had no clue why, it wasn't like the game would actually leave dirt on him—and rubbed the back of his head. "Maaan, you sure got me! That was one hell of a combo you pulled off there. That long hair of yours was blocking my vision, too, ha-ha!"

I crossed my arms. He was still trying to be disarming, after all that?

"Say, was that that Martial Arts thing that people were going on about at the end of the beta? You wouldn't tell me where to find it, would ya?"

"No."

"Jeez, you're such a buzzkill, aren't you?" Morte's tone was playful, but his obviously fake smirk made it clear that he wasn't the least bit happy. I had pretty much ruined his plan, and on top of that I had beaten him at his own game—and in a way that probably frustrated him a ton.

I didn't say anything in response. The last thing I wanted to do was entertain this maniac.

Morte finally dropped his friendly facade, at least slightly. "Alright, alright, you won. Soo, you wanted to know what I'm up to, right?" Morte spread his arms out wide. "I just want a little friendly conflict, you see. All the guildies surprisingly get along pretty well, but a little healthy competition can do a lot of good, riiight? Just so happens that me being here serves as a nice catalyst for that. They're pretty neck-and-neck right now, so who knows what'll happen!"

So it _was_ related to the DKB and ALS. He wanted to incite conflict between them… Morte claimed it was for their own good, but I doubted that. But what exactly did he mean by 'neck-and-neck'? Their levels, player count, clearing progress?

No, if he was obstructing us from the quest, then both of the guilds had to be here right now.

As I stood there lost in thought, Morte realized that I wasn't going to say anything else to him and went to collect his gear. He walked out into the river and shot his hand out into the water precisely where his shield had landed. He did the same with his sword, as if he had remembered the exact spot where he had thrown it.

"Well, uh…" Morte turned his head suddenly as if he'd noticed something. "Ah, perfect! I s'pose I'll be off then! Got stuff to do, you know, ha-haa! Too-de-loos!"

And with that, Morte vanished into the forest.

I remained motionless for another moment before my nerves finally got to me. I collapsed to my knees and heaved a sigh of relief. That was way too close, and it marked the second time I'd come dangerously near to dying in the past week.

"Probably shouldn't make a habit of that," I mumbled to myself. Honestly, it felt like that it wasn't getting to me as much as I expected it to. I pushed myself to my feet, deciding that now wasn't the time to think about it.

I dashed back the way we had came and towards the forest elf camp, traversing the uneven forest floor with ease. I made my way around the cliff and along the side the hill the camp stood upon. The hill itself had little cover from the road so I stuck to the foot of the hill where the forest provided plenty. As I approached I could hear the shouts of an argument that was starting to become quite heated.

The path leading up the hill to the forest elf camp connected just at the foot of the hill to the main path that started at Zumfut in the east and ran west along more than half of the Floor, parallel to the river. At the intersection of the two paths was the source of the argument.

On the side of the intersection opposite of the one I approached from, Lind stood in front of the rest of his party, his arms crossed and his face tense. Well, tenser than usual—he was almost never relaxed from what I had seen. As for the group on the other side, they were larger in number at around two full parties. From where I was I didn't have a view of their faces, but considering the context I didn't need to be able to see them to know that they were members of the ALS.

I got as close as I could, making sure that I was deep enough into the trees that I would go unnoticed.

"There's no point in continuing to argue over this," Lind said, his voice as stiff as his posture. "We arrived here first. Therefore, it is only fair that we should proceed with our quest before you."

Kibaou's accented voice chopped through the air. "Pah! Ya only beat us by a second or two at best! It don't mean jack!"

Lind's words proved to me that there was in fact a quest on the forest elf side at this same camp. I wondered idly what it might be, but that wasn't pertinent at the moment. What _was_ pertinent was that the two were continuing to argue, and I was worried that it might escalate further. I didn't want to have to step in, but if they went too far…

"'Sides, why should we have'ta play along with yer little rules or whatever? We've gotta beat this assault quest, and I'm not about ta' let you get ahead of us!"

Kibaou's words made me wince. He called it an 'assault quest' which wasn't wrong in any way, but after being around Kizmel it just felt wrong somehow to blindly slaughter the forest elves. Besides that, I was kind of surprised that the ALS was at the same point in the campaign as us. I couldn't know when they had started, but they had had Morte helping them, after all.

Kibaou turned away from Lind to start up the path towards the camp. Lind hastily grabbed his shoulder to stop him, causing the rest of players present to tense up.

"Wait a second, Kibaou! The camp disappears once someone completes the quest there, and it shows back up somewhere else in the forest! If you did the quest now, there'd be no point in us waiting here!"

Kibaou spun around and snapped at Lind. "So yer sayin' that _you_ should go first and we get the short end of the stick, huh?!"

"We _were_ here first, so yes, that's exactly—"

And then the camp vanished.

Lind stared at the camp, dumbfounded. Confused by the blue-haired knight's sudden silence, Kibaou followed his gaze only to be equally shocked.

 _Nice timing, Kirito._ I rolled my eyes and stepped out of my hiding spot, not bothering to be silent about it. All eyes turned to me.

I held up my hand lamely. "Uh… yo."

Kibaou clicked his tongue and returned his gaze to where the camp used to be. His face only grew darker upon seeing Kirito. "'Course. Should'a figured it was the _beaters_ behind this nonsense."

I bristled slightly at the word; the way Kibaou accented it made it sound derogatory than it already was. I did my best to ignore him and walked forwards to meet Kirito partway. "That was good timing on your part, for better or for worse. Probably worse…" I said as I scanned my vision over the group of players in front of us.

"What have I missed?"

"Well, these guys were arguing about who would get to use the camp a second ago, but that's obviously moot now…" I leaned in closer to whisper. "Morte was involved with them being here, but now's not the time for that."

"So are you two just gonna whisper to each other all day, or are we gonna get an explanation?!" Kibaou shouted, his already small amount of patience evaporated.

I turned around to glare at him. "What is there to explain? Kirito was already up in the camp doing our quest while you all wasted your time down here bickering."

"What I meant was why the hell did y'all just _happen_ to be here at the same time as us?!"

I hesitated to reply as I wasn't sure how much I should let them know. Morte was a huge problem, but I doubted that trying to tell them about him now wouldn't work out too well.

Kirito picked up the slack and replied coolly. "Just a coincidence, I guess. I'd say a better question is why _both_ guilds happened to be here at the same time. It makes sense for us to be questing in the middle of the night, but not you guys."

"Grrh, don't you talk down ta me! I—"

Lind suddenly made a confused face and held out his hand to interrupt Kibaou. "Er, I don't mean to avoid the current topic, but I need to ask—Rei-san, why is your health so low?"

I glanced up at my health bar in confusion, only to realize that I hadn't healed at all since I fought Morte. " _Ah, hell._ " I quickly fumbled through my menu and pulled out a healing potion. "I was kind of in a rush, so I just forgot about it."

I hadn't really answered his question, but Lind didn't pry further. Thankfully, his interruption gave Kibaou a much-needed moment to think. "Tch… well, I suppose I can accept that you'd be questin' at this time of night. We did run into y'all early the other day, after all." He crossed his arms and his suspicious tone of voice returned. "Which reminds me… Where's yer other partner?"

I ignored the small prickle of deja vu that I felt. "Well, Asuna should still be asleep, unless she's woken up since we left."

Kibaou's eyes narrowed. "Whatever. While we're at it, I got another question for ya: I bet you weren't plannin' to tell us that the campaign has an item that we need to kill the boss, right?"

Kirito cocked his head in confusion. "Uhh, what?"

"Don't play dumb! You know exactly what I'm talkin' about!"

I took a deep breath to try to keep myself calm, which was becoming increasingly difficult. "No, we really don't. This is as far as I ever made it through the campaign in the beta, but I never heard of any kind of required item."

"Pah! There was some item we needed last Floor that was new, right? Course there'd be one here, too! You jus' won't tell us."

"God damn it, why do you need to accuse us over every single little thing?!" I shouted. Kirito put his hand on my shoulder to stop me; if he hadn't I would have kept yelling at Kibaou. "Okay, maybe there is something, I don't know. But you're acting like you know for sure that this is the case. I know who gave you that idea, and I'll say right now that you absolutely can not trust him."

Kibaou's face contorted with anger. "How do you know—why should I believe you?!"

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, gee, I dunno, maybe he's the _beater_ that was in your party the other day." I paused for a moment to rub my forehead. "Look, that aside, you seriously can't trust him."

"Why not?!"

"Because he's really dangerous! You—"

"She's lying!" a high-pitched screech came from the back of Kibaou's group. The group parted slightly as he pushed his way to the front. "She's just trying to make excuses so that they can keep doing the campaign without us knowing!"

The man's voice sounded vaguely familiar… he was skinny and clad in the green color that the ALS had adopted. At his side was a sheathed Numb Dagger. A leather mask obscured his face, which gave him an appearance that was slightly unnerving.

"Listen, you don't—" Kirito started.

"I won't listen to you! You're the reason Diavel died! I—"

Kibaou held his hand out in front of the masked man to stop him. "Can it, Joe," he growled. It looked like the Diavel comment got on his nerves. "Look, I ain't gonna listen to ya; I'll trust who I want. It's none'a yer business."

"It _is_ my business!" I stamped my foot on the ground in frustration. "Seriously, he's going to get you killed!"

"Yeah, so what?! Even if you _were_ right, why would _you_ care?!"

"Because—Grrh, you know what, fine. I _don't_ care. If your group dies and people start giving up because of that, it's your fault, not mine."

"Hey, Rei—"

"Forget it, Kirito. He's not going to listen to us."

"I think now might be a good time for me to step in?" A voice sounded behind me.

I whirled around in shock. In front of me stood our cool-headed but warm-haired fencer. "Jesus, Asuna! You scared the hell out of me!"

Asuna smiled slightly to apologize. "Ah, sorry, sorry." She turned to face Kibaou and the rest with a stern look on her face. "Let me ask you something, Kibaou-san. Why do you insist on finding it so hard to trust these two?"

"Eh? 'Cause they're beta testers."

"So? That's no reason."

Kibaou blinked in confusion. "Uh, well… Don't'cha remember what happened at the start? While we were all confused, the testers all up and ran off ta get ta all the good stuff before us. How could I trust 'em after that?"

" _Wha—This again?_!" I yelled, momentarily slipping into English. " _Don't you—_ Don't you remember what Agil said back at the first boss meeting?! And Diavel agreed with him!"

"Tch, so what?!" My mention of Diavel had only made Kibaou angrier. "That doesn't mean anything! You lot still took advantage of us—"

"That's enough." Asuna's voice was frigid and her glare even colder; quiet as they were, her words were more than enough to silence Kibaou. "How can you hope to call yourself a leader when you act like this? You should be ashamed of yourself. Nevermind the fact that you're making baseless assumptions about an entire group, you're no better than these people that 'took advantage of you' when you try to exclude innocent people for no good reason."

A familiar smooth voice sounded quite literally out of thin air right behind Asuna. "She's right." Out of the same spot, Kizmel appeared, her powerful invisibility cloak now draped upon her shoulders.

The guilds had been rendered speechless before, but now they looked completely frozen, as if the game's server had crashed. Frankly, I was just as shocked; Asuna being here was one thing, but to think that Kizmel came along as well...

"I suppose I should introduce myself." She straightened her posture and raised her fist to her heart in a salute. "My name is Kizmel! I am a proud knight of the Pagoda Knights' Brigade, under the kingdom of Lyusula! These brave adventurers saved my life, and as such I have pledged to assist them in their journey up Aincrad."

A deathly silence sat over the players for a few moments. Before any of them could work up the nerve to say anything, Kizmel continued.

"Asuna speaks the truth. Maliciously excluding a whole group due to the actions of specific individuals is no way to lead. While I will not say that such conflict is unavoidable—I have seen as much within my kingdom's own brigades—it can be handled much more maturely than this."

The guilds stared at Kizmel in stunned silence. This elf, this _NPC_ was lecturing them. She even knew the name of a player. And on top of that, to the DKB her cursor was likely so red that it was almost pitch black.

And sure enough, the first words to leave Lind's mouth weren't related to Kizmel's words but instead that last point. "A… are you sure you guys should be standing there…?" he asked, his voice shaking. I shrugged in response.

Kibaou leaned over to whisper to Lind; I couldn't hear him, but I presumed he was asking about Kizmel's cursor. He actually seemed rather unfazed about Asuna and Kizmel lecturing him—at least, he wasn't letting it show on his face, which I thought was an impressive feat for him.

Kizmel smiled a little upon seeing the murmurs spread throughout the group. When I glanced at her questioningly, she responded, "Well, I suppose I can understand why you may not get along so well; it seems that even your language is not that unified." She cast a subtle glance at me before looking back at the guilds. "I can barely understand the orange-haired one."

I snorted in amusement; she was referring to Kibaou's rather heavy accent. I made a mental note to ask Kizmel more about the elves and what she knew of humans later.

The whispering between the guilds continued for a few more moments. It seemed as if their conversation had suddenly become much more serious, but it was hard for me to tell.

Finally, the whispering ended and Kibaou and Lind turned back to face us. "We've come to a decision," Lind announced. "Both the DKB and the ALS will be abandoning the campaign."

"Uhh, um… what?" I stammered out, oblivious as to how they could have come to _that_ conclusion.

"If both of us continue to work on these quests, it is likely that further conflict like what has occured today will be unavoidable. At the same time, if only one of the guilds abandons the campaign, that would give the other free reign over the labyrinth."

"Well, that makes sense…" Kirito said. "But what about—"

Lind held up his hand to stop him. "Of course, we can't just ignore such a large piece of content outright, due to the possibility of it holding something that we need. That's where you three come in—clearly," he glanced at Kizmel nervously, "you are best suited to this task."

"So, I guess that you'll be working on the labyrinth now?" I asked.

"'Course we will!" Kibaou retorted. "...'Sides, we can't have a small group like yours go in and get killed in some accident!"

I sighed. "That's one way of framing it, I guess…" In truth it was probably just a good excuse to keep us from getting ahead of them in the labyrinth, but I didn't have any reason to complain. And Kibaou was at least trying to be amicable, which helped.

Kirito remained silent in thought for a moment, then turned to face Lind. "Alright. We were planning to fight the boss on the twenty-first, right?"

Lind nodded.

"We'll have the campaign completed by the evening before, then." Kirito grinned wryly. "Of course, you'll have to trust our info."

"We have no problems with that at this point." Lind quickly glanced over his followers and spoke in a much more formal tone. "The DKB will start tackling the labyrinth tomorrow morning, and we will reconvene at 17:00 tomorrow evening. Good night." He and his party marched down the path to the east and vanished into the woods.

"Well, don't just stand there like a bunch'a idiots!" Kibaou roared at his own guild. "We ain't gonna let them get a jump start on us!" The ALS roared back in response and went off in the opposite direction.

The four of us, now alone at the intersection, stood there for a moment in silence. "Well… I guess that worked out," I eventually mumbled.

"For now, at least," Asuna replied after letting out a long breath. "So, I have a few questions…"

"R-right," Kirito nodded nervously, probably afraid that Asuna was angry. "Well, we can talk while we make our way back to camp. After all," he turned his left hand palm-up to reveal a sealed scroll, "we need to get this back to the commander."

Kizmel smiled; she turned and started walking towards the path that the ALS took, which prompted us to follow. "I see you were successful. Still, what you did was dangerous; had I not woken up to notice you two had gone, that encounter may not have gone so smoothly."

"S-sorry."

Asuna crossed her arms, seemingly annoyed. "It was my idea to follow you, by the way. I figured you two were up to some nonsense."

I raised my hands defensively. "Hey, this was all Kirito. I only followed him because I woke up when he was leaving the tent."

Kirito bowed his head slightly and apologized again. "Sorry. And thanks."

"I have been wondering," Kizmel asked after a short silence, "what did the orange-haired one mean when he called you some strange name?"

"'Beta testers', you mean?" I asked.

"Yes, that."

I nodded. "Testers… well, it's kinda like, uh… well…"

"Scouts, I guess?" Kirito interjected.

"Yeah! Scouts. That works. By the way, instead of brigades we call our groups 'guilds'."

"If that is the case, I cannot fathom why they would ever treat you the way they seem to," Kizmel replied, her tone indignant.

"Well… it's a lot more complicated than that," I admitted. My response was vague, but I couldn't think of a good way to explain it to Kizmel.

"Hmm… I suppose that often that is true of most things…" Kizmel mused. "I was hesitant to bring this up before, but I imagine your situation is indeed quite complicated…"

Asuna tilted her head in confusion. Kizmel was being unusually cryptic, even with how human she was for an NPC. "What do you mean?"

"Well, the three of you, as well as those guilds from earlier, are not of this world, correct?"

The three of us stopped dead in our tracks. I wasn't expecting Kizmel to know that, of all things. This whole time we had been careful around Kizmel and tried to avoid saying anything out-of-place. At first I hadn't been able to put my finger on why it made us feel so antsy, but it was pretty obvious now that because she was so lifelike we didn't want to risk ruining that, paranoid as that sounded. But maybe we didn't need to be so careful, after all…

"I do not know much about it myself, but from what I understand it is one of humankind's last powerful charms, almost on the scale of a true spell of the past. The ability to summon heroes from beyond our own world… I would think that the goal of such an act would be to unify all of Aincrad, perhaps even return it the lands from which it came, but I imagine that you three are mostly concerned with getting back home?"

It was a reasonable explanation, at least from her point of view. "Yeah…" Kirito replied softly. "That sounds about right."

Kizmel smiled her brightest smile yet. "Well, rest assured that I will assist you in your adventures as much as I can. I owe you that much, at least."

We fell into silence, which gave me some time to be alone with my own thoughts. We needed to decide how we were going to handle Morte… He clearly had some amount of influence over both guilds, but what could we do about it? We could talk to Lind and Kibaou about it in private, but the likelihood that they'd believe me was kind of questionable. On top of that, the last thing that I wanted to do was cause panic among the group.

"Oh, Rei-chan," Asuna said, interrupting my train of thought. "I noticed this a while back, too… for a moment you started to speak in English back when you were arguing with Kibaou, but you caught yourself. I was just wondering…"

Before I could reply, Kizmel spoke. "Indeed, I was curious about that as well. It seemed almost… vaguely familiar, but I can't quite place it."

"Oh, that?" I put my hands behind my head lazily. "I grew up with both languages, that's all. So sometimes I'll swap between the two if I'm not thinking about it…"

"So you're fluent in it, then?" Asuna asked.

I nodded.

"Hmm," she hummed. I couldn't tell what she might have been thinking.

Meanwhile, Kizmel was busy with her own thoughts. "Hmm, maybe… It's not very likely, but it's still possible…"

"What is it?" I asked, curious as to what could have her so unsure.

"Well, once you've made your way to the queen's castle on the ninth Floor, it may be worth your time to visit the Grand Archive and speak with the historians there… the probability of it is low, but that language of yours might be the key they are looking for."

"I… see." I responded. Kizmel's rather vague reply hadn't told me much, but she didn't elaborate any further. Shortly afterwards we arrived at the dark elf camp.

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 **Hey everyone!**

 **Maan, this took me a while. The length of this chapter makes up for it slightly (twice as long as average!), but still. 4 months. Yeesh, what the heck, me.**

 **I'm sure you have no doubt in this matter considering my track record, but I'd like to take the opportunity to say that the fact that posting chapters takes me a long time doesn't mean I've ever flat-out stopped working on SoLaD. I'm coming up with ideas constantly, but sometimes it just takes me a while to get it written (or typed, rather) down. A good chunk of that is due to my chronic laziness/procrastination, but here recently life has been getting in the way a bit as well, as it is wont to do.** **Point is: never fear, despite my long absences SoLaD is here to stay.**

 **I seem to be whinging about how long it takes me to update in just about every one of these. Hm. It's almost like it's a recurring issue… well, I'm sure you get it by now.**

 **Onto today's chapter… Initially I considered releasing just the duel between Rei and Morte as a chapter on its own (it's certainly long enough), but I decided to hold on to it. Which was good, since it's been improved over these past months.**

 **Putting a rural accent like Kibaou has into text can be tricky to pin down and keep consistent—I don't want to make it too excessive, but it needs to be obvious, y'know? Hopefully I've done a good job of that.**

 **There's also the English… being bilingual is a part of Rei's character (and it might be pertinent to the story, as you can probably tell) but sometimes it feels like, at least in this context, there's no way to write that that doesn't come across… kinda eugh. I don't know how else to put that. At the very least, I certainly think that I handled it much better than the first time she spoke in English like that (obligatory reminder that, y'know, the characters are Japanese and hence speak Japanese by default. Probably don't need to say that, but, nyeh).**

 **Okay, rambling over. That's all for today.**

 **Take care!**


	15. Chapter 14: Treading Water

**Monday, December 19th, 2022, 1:30 A.M.**

Once we had returned to the camp, the others went to report to the commander while I made a beeline for Kizmel's tent where I promptly collapsed.

I was _exhausted_. The fact that I had only slept for a couple hours aside, fighting for my life and dealing with the bickering of the guilds was… stressful. I had had a small moment of respite after the duel was over, but now that I had the time to sit down and simply think about it for a moment I could actually feel the impact of what had just happened.

"Jeez… what the hell…" I mumbled. Dealing with the guilds already took way too much energy out of me—even if they cooperate fine, I just couldn't do well around them—but now I had to worry about someone that wanted me _dead_. Or at least out of the way and dead being the easiest path to such. And Kirito was likely in the same situation, as Morte seemed eager to fight either of us. Who knew what else he was plotting…

Wait, wait wait. Could Morte have been the guy that taught the Legend Braves that upgrade scam? But compared to how direct Morte was, that scam was far too subtle… So he was either working with someone else, or there just happens to be two—or more—people working independently. There was that guy in the ALS with the screechy voice, too…

I heard Asuna's voice along with footsteps approaching from outside. "I suppose we should get back to sleep…" she trailed off as they enter the tent. "I'd like to talk about what happened tonight, but…"

I held up my hand to stop her. "Sleep, please. We can talk in the morning, I'm too tired and stressed out right now."

"R-right, sorry."

I rolled over and mumbled incomprehensibly as a response. I barely remembered to take off my armor before I fell asleep, as little actual armor as I had.

* * *

 **Monday, December 19th, 2022, 6:30 A.M.**

I woke up only feeling moderately better than the night before. Getting my sleep interrupted had left me feeling a little groggy.

That being said, only Kizmel had woken up before me; I saw Kirito and Asuna begin to stir as I sat up.

Before getting breakfast I explained all the details of our encounter with Morte to Asuna as well as filling Kirito in on the few things he missed. I also brought up my concerns about how this incident might not have been so isolated. Unfortunately, for the time being there wasn't much we were able to do about it—we would just have to be careful.

After that, it was time for quests. The quest after Infiltration was quite short, involving simply chasing down an oversized butterfly that the forest elves were using to scout. After that, the commander had decided on a course of action to take after reading the plans we had stolen from the forest elves.

We were to head to a spirit tree on the western edge of the Floor so that the Jade Key could be secretly transported to a safer location. Rather expectedly, though, we were ambushed by masked attackers that I assumed were forest elves. Unfortunately one of them stole the Key and escaped.

Kirito had told Asuna and I to expect the remainder of the quest to last well into the night, as tracking down the thief was supposedly annoyingly difficult. One of the guards that had accompanied us on the quest had hit the thief with a small bottle that left a sort of tracker on him—it was normally extremely hard to spot in the forest's dense mists, but Kizmel's powerful eyesight mostly trivialized that.

After finding the thief's hideout in the afternoon, much to Kirito's surprise, we reported back to the commander at the camp. In the evening we began the final quest, but as it involved a large dungeon we weren't able to complete it that night.

We returned to the dungeon the next morning—this time without the extra soldiers that had accompanied us. After fighting through the dungeon, at the end we found the thief's hideout. Instead of forest elves, though, we found elves with purple skin and evil-looking features, called Fallen elves. Kizmel looked uncomfortable at the sight of them, but it wasn't the time to ask about it.

After fighting though the fallen elves, we found the Jade Key among various other treasure and this time safely transported it to the spirit tree.

When we arrived at the tree, there was a large group of dark elves waiting to take the Key up to the next Floor. At this point, Kizmel turned to us to speak.

"Kirito, Asuna, Rei… now that it has become clear that the forest elves are working with the Fallen, the Jade Key must be secured as quickly as possible. Normally it would likely have fallen upon me to take the Key to the fortress on the next Floor, but…" she glanced over at her fellow knights. "It seems that it has already been taken care of."

"So…" Asuna trailed off, not needing to vocalize what we were all thinking.

"That being said, I will need to report to that place rather promptly… If you do not mind, I would like to accompany you up the Pillar, however I would have to return here afterward."

Asuna nodded vigorously. "Of course, you can stay with us as long as you like."

Kizmel smiled and bowed slightly. "Well then, I trust you'll take care of me."

* * *

 **Wednesday, December 21st, 2022, 1:20 P.M.**

After finishing up the campaign quests for the 3rd Floor, the only 'reward' that was in any way related to the Floor boss was a small bit of information—it made heavy use of poison attacks, so bring a lot of antidotes.

While that _was_ a change from the beta, where the boss didn't have poison attacks, it was standard practice to carry as many potions as you reasonably could, so the advice was rather moot. And fortunately the guilds didn't make a big deal about it.

As for the actual rewards we received, we were provided with a decent list of items to choose one from. Asuna chose a cloak made out of the same material as Kizmel's—while not as powerful, it still gave a good bonus to Hiding and Agility. I picked a new pair of boots that provided resistance to tumbles and gave a small boost to jumping power, which felt reassuring after that duel with Morte. Kirito waffled over the decision for a while, but eventually he chose the same item as me.

The northern section of the Floor was rather sparse; as the bulk of the Floor's content was the elf campaign which took place in the south, the north only had a few grinding locations, the labyrinth town «Dressel», and some random filler quests. As we had no need to do them, we skipped most of that and made our way straight to the labyrinth and the boss.

Lind was a little skeptical about Kizmel being a part of our party, but since it was clear she was our ally he decided to defer to our judgment. All in all the boss fight was rather simple; with his poison mostly negated «Nerius the Evil Treant» was an easy fight. Between Asuna's powerful rapier and Kizmel's assistance, the battle took well under an hour. Unsurprisingly, Morte was nowhere to be found.

Kirito got the LA Bonus, of course.

Despite our reluctance, Kizmel dropped out of the party and made her way back down the labyrinth and to the spirit tree. The guilds were busy working out loot, so the three of us were left to climb the stairs on our own.

Soon the door was upon us… and quite quickly I noticed a problem.

"Hey, Kirito…"

"Hm? Oh…"

"Hey, why are you two just staring at the door? Is it because it's the 4th Floor?"

It took me a moment to understand Asuna's question. "What do you… oh, no, I don't get all that superstitious stuff. And Kirito certainly doesn't; just look at him."

Kirito rolled his eyes at me.

"No, the problem is the door itself. Correct me if I'm wrong, Kirito, but… wasn't the 4th Floor a giant dusty canyon?"

"No, that's right…"

"So why is there an engraving of a boat out on the water here?"

"I would think that the Floor has changed, then," Asuna said.

"Well, I'm getting a bad feeling…" Kirito mumbled.

Kirito pushed the door open, and we were greeted with a sight that couldn't have been more different from the beta.

The door opened out to a small pavilion atop a steep grassy hill—a hill that in the beta had been completely barren of plant life. A large tree was growing behind us, but aside from that the hill was mostly empty. Tall cliffs towered above the hill most of the way around. A couple of paths forked off from the pavilion and headed down the hill to the canyon surrounding it…

A canyon that was now filled with flowing water, which left via a single outlet to the south. We were stuck on an island.

"Wha… what the hell?!" I shouted.

"Well, that's that, then," Asuna said, as if she'd proven a point somehow.

Kirito and I just stood there for a moment to take in what was in front of us. There had certainly been numerous changes implemented in SAO since the beta, but none on this kind of scale—at least until now. Back in the beta, the canyons had been the only way of moving throughout the floor. So now what were we supposed to do?

"Hey, hellooo? Earth to Thing One and Thing Two." Asuna elbowed Kirito in the side and pulled us out of our stupor.

"Oh, um… sorry," he replied.

"I don't need an apology, but we shouldn't be making the others wait around for us to activate the teleporter."

"Right. Er, first we need to—"

"I contacted Argo while you two were zoned out, if that's what you're about to say."

"Oh, um, thanks." At least _one_ of us was being capable. "Well then… I would say we should get going, but I don't think it's going to be so simple…"

"Well, is the Floor at least laid out the same way as before?"

"It looks like it," I answered.

"What are we waiting for, then? Lead the way!" Asuna pushed us forwards a bit, so we walked down to the edge of the water. I peered over the edge; with just a glance it was clear that the canyons were just as deep as before.

"Wait, this looks awfully deep… We can't cross this," Asuna said.

 _Cross…?_ I looked up from the water at Asuna. "Wait, I think you've misunderstood. In the beta the only way to get around the Floor was by walking through the canyons. There isn't anything else; the 'pathways' _are_ the water."

Asuna's brow furrowed. "So, there's…"

"No path at all."

"Well… what about the top of those cliffs?"

Kirito shook his head. "No way. No one could climb them in the beta. Even if we could, it's too dangerous… and we'd still have to cross the water."

Asuna looked back to the water. "I guess the only option left is to swim, then."

Kirito and I weren't so ready to accept that conclusion. "It's not that simple," he said.

"Why not?"

"Well, swimming in SAO is quite dangerous. It's completely different from how swimming works in real life, and takes a lot of practice to swim even in still water."

I laughed nervously. "Didn't stop you from diving into that lake in the cave, though."

"Well, I'm used to it at this point. But rushing water like this is completely different, and there's still the risk that we could drown."

"How much practice is 'a lot'?" Asuna asked.

"Well, it took me at least an hour to figure it out in a shallow pond, and a while after that to get good at it… That doesn't mean it won't take longer for you or anyone else…"

"We need to activate the gate, though, and we don't have any other way… If you two went back—"

At this point I had to voice my growing concerns. "No, there _has_ to be another way. I can't accept that."

"Huh? Why not?"

"Because… I don't even know how to swim in the first place."

"…"

"Wait, really? But…" Kirito trailed off, surprised by my statement.

"Yes, really. I didn't really… I just… never learned, okay? But that aside, look at it from a design standpoint."

"Design standpoint… no, you're right, we must be missing something…"

"Huh? You lost me," Asuna said.

"Well, with how dangerous swimming is, it's crazy to think that we'd be thrown into a Floor like this. SAO is cruel, but it's not unfair…" Kirito started looking around, as if there was anything on this barren hill to find.

Actually, there was one thing we hadn't really looked at. I spun around and jogged up to the tree that we had seen behind the pavilion. Kirito had come to the same conclusion and rushed up the hill, dragging Asuna behind him by the hand.

I pointed up at the branches above us. "There, look."

"Hm?" Asuna grunted, a little ruffled by the sudden upheaval, and she took a moment to straighten her skirt. Once she finally looked up, her mood improved for a moment. "Oh, fruit! And they're colorful, too."

Indeed, growing on the tree were a bunch of donut-shaped, multicolored fruits. On their own, they seemed kind of weird.

Asuna's smile quickly faded away again. "But… what does this have to do with anything? We don't have the time for food right now."

"Well, here, give me a second." Kirito reached up to one of the lowest branches and tried to shake the tree; unsurprisingly it didn't budge, nor did the fruit.

"Ah, come on… If only I had the right Skill for this…"

I rolled my eyes and walked up to the tree. A good punch with Flash Blow was all it took to knock down a couple of the fruits. I caught one in my hand, while the other two bounced off Kirito's head before he caught them himself.

"… Oh."

Asuna gave me a look like I shouldn't have punched the tree, but I just shrugged.

"So are we supposed to be eating them?" She asked. "If we are, then I want the yellow one." The other two, which were bright neon blue and red, didn't look so appealing to eat.

"No, we're not eating them. At that, they're not shaped like donuts," Kirito said.

"Uhh… what _are_ they shaped like, then?"

Kirito brought the blue fruit up to his mouth, which caused Asuna to huff and cross her arms. Instead of eating it, though, he put the fruit's stem in his mouth and took a deep breath. After blowing hard into the stem—

 _Fwoomp!_

The fruit suddenly inflated to many more times its original size, from a few centimeters wide to almost a meter.

Asuna's annoyance instantly turned to surprise. "Wha—it's an inner tube!"

"Mhmm." He tossed the yellow fruit to her. "Try it for yourself."

"So you think we'll be able to swim safely with these?" Asuna looked down at the fruit in her hand for a moment before inflating it. It bounced around as she struggled to keep the light inner tube still.

"Well, I wouldn't say completely safely," I said after inflating my own fruit, "Plus there's one other thing…"

"What is it?"

"We'll need to take off any gear that would weigh us down."

Asuna's expression soured. "How much gear are we talking?"

"Hmm…" Kirito took a moment to look over Asuna's gear, which seemed to make her a little uncomfortable. "Anything metal, of course, and leather or other materials that would soak up a lot of water… so in your case, your rapier and breastplate, and your boots and gloves… The cape, obviously… your skirt and vest would probably take on a lot of water…"

"That's basically everything, isn't it!?" Asuna threw her inner tube at Kirito's face and it bounced off harmlessly. "I assume you're going to take off the black thing, and all the other black things!"

"Um…" Kirito looked away sheepishly. "I was just looking at what would be the safest for swimming…"

"Uu… I should at least be fine with the tunic, right?"

Kirito nodded. "Yeah, it should be light enough to not really weigh you down."

Asuna huffed and picked up her inner tube, which had landed around Kirito's neck.

I sighed. "Well, the issues with it aside, Kirito's right. Even with these inner tubes, trying to swim fully equipped is suicide. Metal is one thing, but it's surprising how much water cloth will actually soak up. Unequipping our weapons kind of worries me, but… I

guess it'll be fine."

Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to practice fighting with only Martial Arts.

While I spoke, Kirito quickly wrote out a message for the rest of the clearing group about the fruits, and left it in the pavilion on a piece of parchment. It would despawn, but not before they made it up here.

"Oh…" We made our way down to the water's edge again to prepare to venture out. "Do you think there will be monsters in the water, then?" Asuna asked.

I started taking off my equipment as we walked. "There's got to be, it just makes up too much of the Floor. We do have Martial Arts, but even then we can't really fight in the water… It'll be okay if we move quickly. Probably."

"Um—. That's… not very reassuring."

Once Asuna was sure that Kirito was facing the other way and taking off his own equipment, she started to undress as well. I actually felt a little uncomfortable watching her take all her stuff off, so I turned my gaze to check on Kirito instead—

And right there on the ass of his underwear was an embroidered golden bull head. It took me a second to register _why_ he had underwear like that.

"Ahhh… I see."

"Hm?" Asuna turned around just in time to see the sight. "Pffff—ha-hahaha!" It was rare to see the usually level fencer laughing so much.

Kirito spun around, looking hurt. "Hey, come on! You don't have to—"

"No, no, you're more in shape than I am, that's not the issue," I interrupted while waving my hand back and forth. "Rather, you should probably look at your butt."

"Eh?" Kirito stuck his butt out over the water to look at the reflection, causing Asuna to laugh even more. "Wha—!?"

"The LA from Baran, right?"

"Ugh, yeah… it has good resistances and a Strength bonus, though…"

"Well, that aside…" I walked up to the water and stuck my hand in to test the temperature. "Ugeh, cold. At least this Floor isn't matching the weather in the real world, though it'd be nice if all the water was frozen…"

"Hmm…" Kirito stuck his hand in too. "Alright, let me try it out first." He threw his inner tube onto the water and hopped into it, splashing water all over me.

"Gee, thanks."

"S-sorry." He paddled around a bit to get a feel for swimming with the inflated fruit. "Okay, this should work pretty well. You sure you'll be fine, Rei…?"

I kicked at the water to splash his face. "Don't treat me like a kid! I'll be fine, jeez."

Asuna and I joined Kirito in the water and tested out moving around. "Wow, it's been a while since I've gone swimming," Asuna said.

"It's no beach, though…" Kirito replied.

"Actually, I bet there will be one at some point. I should make some swimsuits."

"Oh yeah, you were working on Tailoring before. There might be an ocean Floor, who knows."

After moving around some more Asuna noticed how strange the water in SAO felt. "Um, this is weird," she said.

Kirito nodded. "It doesn't feel quite the same, right? It's kind of… artificial. You'll get used to it soon enough. The current will get stronger at the exit here, so be careful so that we don't get separated."

"Well, then…" Asuna stuck her hand into Kirito's inner tube and grabbed onto it. "Now we should be fine, right?"

"Y-yeah, that works."

Kirito and I did the same so that all three of us were linked together, with Kirito in the middle. After that we started swimming.

"… I'm still kind of worried about monsters in the water."

Kirito glanced over at Asuna. "Ehh, it should fine. I don't remember there being many mobs between the stairs and the main town back in the beta, plus the spawn rate should be really low right now since we just entered the Floor."

"Hasn't that period passed already, though…?"

Kirito hummed noncommittally.

"Oh, um, I think it would be better for me to be in the middle—" I started to say.

I heard a strange splash come from behind us, as if some water had been suddenly displaced under the surface. The other two turned their heads to look, but I didn't bother.

I immediately started kicking faster, but it only did so much—I was already relying a bit on Kirito to pull me along.

"…We should hurry," Kirito said.

"Yeah."

"Ready… GO!"

Kirito and Asuna immediately started kicking much faster, to the point that I could barely keep up at all. With the other two dragging me along we rushed through the water. I noticed Kirito glance back again and subsequently speed up, but I was too focused on hanging on to his inner tube to care.

No thanks to me, we covered probably a couple hundred meters in record time. I damn near lost my grip when we had to make a turn. Once near the shore, Kirito's feet hit the riverbed and he started sprinting as fast as he could, dragging Asuna and me along with him. He turned around when we were a safe distance from the water, and I saw what had been chasing us for the first time.

It looked like an oversized tadpole with a massive dorsal fin, so big that it couldn't even keep its balance when it washed up on the shore. Soon a wave pulled it back out to the water.

The other two must have only seen the fin and thought it was a shark or something.

"Wha… what the hell…" Kirito dropped to his knees and let the inner tubes slip from his arms, dropping Asuna and I face-first into the sand. Asuna pushed herself up after a moment, too tired to be mad at him; I didn't even bother moving at all.

" _Fuck… this Floor…_ " I groaned. The whole ordeal lasted only a minute or two, but I was exhausted and didn't so much as want to think about water for a while.

"Language…" Kirito mumbled. My habit of swearing in English didn't stop him from berating me for it.

"Whatever…"

* * *

Once we collected ourselves, the main settlement «Rovia» was just past the crest of a small hill. I didn't remember much of the town as it had been rather bland back in the beta, just that it had strange buildings that had all their entrances on the second floor, so you had to climb a set of stairs to enter any of them.

Come to think of it, since the whole Floor was flooded now, that probably wasn't just some random design choice.

Sure enough, once we crested the hill it was apparent that the town looked much better than before.

"Ooh, it's so pretty!" Asuna exclaimed with all the fatigue from our ordeal evaporated and more excited than I had ever heard her.

Buildings made of bright white stone rose above a network of waterways that had originally been plain stone paths. Gondolas of varying sizes rowed along the waterways, which fortunately made getting around less of a hassle than I was expecting it to be.

Beautiful as the mini-Venice was, for me it was kind of overshadowed by how troublesome it was to get here. I wasn't looking forward to getting around the rest of the Floor, but hopefully we'd be able to get a gondola of our own somehow.

A small stone path led down the hill to the large entrance gate of the town. Once past its threshold, the game informed us that we had entered a Safe Area. Just up ahead was a large dock where gondolas of varying sizes were waiting for passengers.

"Amazing, it's just like Venice!"

Asuna sure was enjoying this.

Along the dock there were plaques placed periodically that listed the prices to use one of the gondolas. There were no three-person gondolas, but one with space for four was 100 Cor to use once. Hopefully getting around wouldn't end up draining too much of our money…

Kirito examined the gondolas for a moment, and pointed out a four-seater mahogany one with a smooth finish. He turned to look at Asuna. "Will this one do?"

Asuna examined the boat for a moment before nodding. We walked down some steps into the gondola, and the gondolier inside gave us a friendly greeting.

"Welcome, travellers! 100 Cor and I can take ya anywhere in Rovia."

 _In Rovia._ Well, the gondoliers here probably didn't leave town for safety reasons. Kirito asked the gondolier to take us to the teleporter plaza, and a payment window appeared briefly before the gondolier pushed off. He headed down the main street—well, rather—

"Hey, Rei, what was the English word for a waterway?" Kirito asked.

" _Channel._ "

Yeah, that. The main channel. He headed down the main channel of town, which was a good 20 or so meters across and filled with gondola traffic. Shops and stalls were lined up along the sides of the channel, but I imagined that taking detours here would be rather time consuming… and expensive.

Soon we were docked at the plaza, and once we had disembarked the gondolier left with a wave of his hat. When I glanced over at the other two, I saw that Asuna still had sparkles in her eyes.

"That was so much fun!"

"Uh, yeah…" I replied half-heartedly. Sure, riding in a gondola was neat, I guess. She must have just really wanted to ride in one.

Once we activated the Gate and watched the crowds spew forth from a safe distance, we went to rent some inn rooms. Kirito suggested that we all get separate rooms, but I insisted that at the very least I was fine sharing a room with one of them, since it would be cheaper.

We needed to work out what our plan would be for the next day or two before resting, so we ended up on the sofas in Kirito's room. I expected Asuna to be a little on-guard, like she was back in Kizmel's tent, but it appeared that she was still in gondola mode.

"Asuna, do you like ships?" Kirito asked.

Asuna took a moment to reply. "Oh… not particularly, I've just always wanted to ride in a gondola. I didn't expect that to happen here, of all places."

"Yeah, me neither…" I said. "The Floor looks a lot nicer now, but I could do without all the water."

"Yeah, since the gondolas don't seem to go out of town we'll have to deal with more swimming."

I shook my head. "No, I don't know about that. There _has_ to be another way."

Kirito looked at me. "You'll have to learn how to swim at some point, Rei, and we still have the inner tubes."

"Again, don't treat me like a kid!"

Admittedly, I _was_ being kind of stubborn about it.

He laughed. "I'm not, I'm not. What else do you think we can do? Use those ninja water-shoe things to walk on the water?"

"No!—Well, actually, with high enough Agility and low enough weight that might actually be possible if we can get some… Look, the point is I might not be the only person in this situation, and we can't be sure how quickly I'd be able to learn, or anyone else for that matter. Even that aside, fighting is the water is really dangerous."

"You have a point," Asuna said. "Come to think of it, wasn't that fish's cursor fairly red? Rather than just being able to swim, I would think that the problem is the monsters."

Kirito nodded. "It looked like it was fairly high level, despite its uh, appearance. The three of us would do okay, since we're lightweight, but the other players might not do so well without all of their equipment…"

"I think we should at least take a good look around Rovia before being sure that swimming is our only option," I said. "Maybe there is a gondola that leaves the town."

"We'll see, I guess. For now, we need to resupply, and go around and find all the quests we can. We'll be able to look for better alternatives to swimming, too."

"Oh, right!" Asuna suddenly sat up and shouted. "I was going to make swimsuits!"

"You were serious about that?" I questioned. "Wait, do you still even have Tailoring?"

"Ah, about that." Asuna opened up her menu and started looking through her inventory, much to our confusion. After a few moments she triumphantly materialized a small crystalline bottle filled with a glowing liquid and placed it on the table.

"Uh." I blinked, still lost.

Kirito reached out to pick it up, but Asuna blocked his hand. "Well, if you don't know what it is, don't mess with it!"

"I know! I was just going to read its description."

"Waaait…" I looked at the bottle with a large helping of suspicion. "No way, no way. Does that do what I think it does?"

"Well, don't be vague about it!" Asuna said.

"Does… does that bottle store a Skill?" I couldn't believe my own words, but from the way Asuna was acting made that the only conclusion I could draw.

Kirito was reading out what the bottle did as I said that. "Crystal Bottle of Kales'Oh… _allows you to save the proficiency of any skill currently…_ Wha-whaaaaaaaat?!"

Asuna plucked the bottle from the frozen Kirito's hands and, after fiddling with a setting on the item, removed the stopper. The contents turned into a bright blue light that raised up out of the bottle, and Asuna breathed the light in, and then breathed a different, yellow light back into the bottle. She placed the bottle back on the table.

"So now I have my Tailoring level back, and my Sprint level is saved in the bottle."

"Uh… huh. Where did you get it, exactly?" I asked.

"I think it dropped from that forest elf knight we fought when we first saved Kizmel. It was kind of hectic so I don't remember picking it up specifically, but that makes the most sense to me."

"I see…" The forest elf had dropped some good items, but our hands were so full with Kizmel that I hadn't gotten around to checking them until later. I hadn't gotten anything amazing, just some items to sell, and since Kirito and Asuna didn't say anything about it I assumed they hadn't either. But it appears that I had been mistaken.

Well, we didn't exactly go around sharing everything we had either, so it's not like it was that strange.

"Are you two going to just sit there? If we're done, I'd like to go to my own room and get to work on these swimsuits."

"Ahh, uhh…" Kirito stammered. "No, just hold on for a second. I have another question or two…" Kirito took a moment to compose himself before continuing. "Have you told anyone else about this thing, or just us?"

Asuna shrugged.

"Not even Argo?"

"No. When would I have had the chance to show it to her, anyways?"

"Er, right…"

"Why are you overreacting so much?" Asuna questioned. "All it does is hold a Skill, it's not like it improves it or anything."

Asuna's words left me dumbfounded for a moment. _Right, she doesn't have much experience with games…_ "Well, look. Skill slots are a really valuable resource. From what I remember, after level 20 we'll only get another one every ten levels…"

I reached out to pick up the bottle and inspected it myself. It was mostly empty, with just a small amount of liquid at the bottom—maybe the amount represented the level of the Skill, so it could probably hold anything all the way up to the max level. While I looked at the bottle, Kirito explained more about how important Skill slots were to Asuna.

The information window for the item was rather small, as it mostly held just a short description. There was a space for stats and other info, but this kind of item wouldn't have anything like that—

But there was actually something like that. It had a tag that I had never seen before.

『Unique』.

"Hey, uh, Kirito." I nudged his shoulder and cut off whatever he was explaining. "Have you ever seen this item type, or rarity or whatever before?"

"Hm?" I set the window to be visible to party members and he leaned over to look. "Unique? No… I haven't."

"Unique?" Asuna asked. "I did see that before, but I didn't really think much of it… What would that mean? Well, the word gives me a good idea, but I want to be sure…"

"Well…" I put the bottle back down. "It's hard to be completely sure. The first thing that comes to mind is that it's one-of-a-kind. But I've played a game or two where an item being unique didn't mean that it was the only one, just that it had special properties that normal items wouldn't…"

Kirito scratched his head as he thought. "Well, in SAO's case I think it would be more likely to be the former. But if that's the case, we absolutely can't tell anyone else about this. For one, we'd have way too many people hounding us for it."

"It wouldn't exactly help your reputation, either," I commented.

"Ahaha… That aside, this item is really, crazy, extremely rare, that much is for sure. Plus our encounter with that forest elf wasn't exactly the standard, and you only get to fight that particular enemy once… You should be careful with it."

Asuna put the bottle back into her inventory and nodded slowly. "I see… Yeah, I can see how having an extra Skill slot would be a big deal."

"Maybe once we hear about another Unique item appearing or something, it would be okay if other people would know about it—it's not like I _want_ to completely hide its existance... Plus I guess we're not completely sure that that's even what Unique means… But I want to put your safety before anything else."

I wondered how Asuna would react to Kirito's sudden sentiment. I had a hard time getting a read on her sometimes—thinking back on it, aside from the odd conversation or two, I hadn't put much effort into knowing her better. Which, to be honest, was kind of the norm for me.

Asuna simply stared at Kirito for a moment before she looked away in a huff. "If that's what you want to do, fine," she said in a small voice.

'Oh, uh… w-well, okay." Kirito was apparently surprised by her response. "Uh, well… we can rest for a bit now, so how about we meet back up in the café below at six?"

Asuna made a small nod and left the room.

Kirito looked at me, a small hint of concern showing on his face. "Uh… I didn't make her mad, right?"

I sighed in mild frustration. "Well, if it's all the same to you, I'm gonna go… I dunno. Do something, I guess? Later." I got up and left the room myself.

I stopped in front of Asuna's room and reached out to open the door, but I hesitated. I kind of wanted to talk with her for a bit, but…

Eventually I decided against it and left the inn. I found myself suddenly feeling kind of listless, so I figured wandering around the town for a bit might help. Between the boss fight—easy as it was, relatively speaking—and all the water, it had already been a pretty long day.

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 **Hey everyone!**

 **Business as usual as far as the time between releases. From your perspective, at least—I mostly got this done in the past three weeks or so. But let's not dwell on that.**

 **As you may have noticed this chapter isn't quite at the length of the previous one, but the length has still increased somewhat compared to older chapters. I have a few thoughts on chapter length, but I'll spare you them for now.**

 **You also likely noticed that I _finally_ added a cover image. It's extremely minimal, and probably more of a placeholder** ** **—if I manage to get something together that's better than I'll replace it, sooner rather than later provided I don't get lazy. But it's better than nothing.  
****

 **By the way, 4 is an unlucky number in Japan (and China) much like 13 is here in the US and elsewhere.**

 **I keep wanting to talk about how in places the story becomes similar/identical to canon, even down to the word in places, but I think I'm better off not rambling about it. It's… a complex topic, and something I think isn't too suited to ANs. Bottom line is, it serves the story the way I want it to so that's how it is, I guess.**

 **In general I've noticed that I tend to ramble a lot in ANs and then edit it down later. Words are hard.**

 **That's all from me for today. Take care!**


	16. Chapter 15: Umbra Futuri

**Wednesday, December 21st, 2022, 4:00 P.M.**

I managed to kill an hour just by going around Rovia and picking up any quests I spotted. I knew I hadn't gotten everything, but since Argo was bound to go through the city soon I wasn't too worried about it. Now I just needed to figure out what to do for another two hours.

I didn't really feel like resting, despite the fact that today had been kind of busy already. From my perspective it seemed more sensible to save the resting for when it was actually time to sleep; I didn't exactly feel like staying up all through the night.

I crouched down at the edge of the pathway I was on and peered into the crystalline blue water. Since it was constantly being agitated by passing gondolas, the water didn't provide much of a coherent reflection.

I just needed something to do to get away from my thoughts… I didn't want to work on any of the quests without the other two, and besides that some of them required going elsewhere in the Floor—no thanks. That left me with the other three Floors to work with. I wasn't really in the mood to do any level grinding, but what else would that leave me with?

I searched my memory for any random tidbit about the Floors that hadn't faded away since the beta. Surely there was _something_ I needed to go back to…

* * *

When I stepped out of the Teleporter Gate onto the plaza of Starting City, I was met with more activity than I was expecting. There _was_ probably 6- to 7000 people still in the city, after all, and since we had been making steady progress at the front many of them had already moved on from the early doom and gloom. That said, among all the crowds there was a notable bubble of emptiness near the entrance to Black Iron Palace. The place was fairly intimidating to begin with as its cold, metal exterior was a sharp contrast to the city around it. The Monument of Life held within it served to further the ominous impression.

I was tempted to go into the castle and look at the Monument for myself, but I decided against it. It wasn't worth the possible mental anguish for the time being—it would distract me from my current goal, and I could always go look at it later.

Instead I started up the northern path towards the exit of the city. There was a significant number of players shopping at the various NPC stalls or just hanging around and chatting; in addition to that there were a few that were selling their own wares, mostly blacksmiths selling what looked to be pretty decent starting gear. None of it was of any use to me so I just walked past it all.

Even with my cloak on, I was still drawing a lot of attention. Maybe they were able to tell that I was a much higher level than all of them. Or maybe they could tell I was a girl despite my cloak mostly covering me. The player base was overwhelmingly male, a fact made obvious by us being forced into our real appearances. Either way, I was drawing a bit more attention than I was comfortable with.

After I left the city, I made my way to a small forested path bounded on one side by a cliff. In the beta, we had found a rather conspicuous-looking cave that had been blocked off by fallen borders, and at the time no one had been able to figure out how to get in. The solution was obvious now, though. I had punched a huge boulder right in half just a couple weeks ago.

Soon I came upon the blocked cave. First I gave a solid punch to the boulders without using a Sword Skill—a bit of a crack, but nothing that would break the whole wall down. Since that didn't work too well I switched to using Sword Skills, and after a few hits the boulders collapsed in a pile of dust. I saw light shine through the cracks each time I struck the boulders which seemed kind of odd, but I just chalked it up to the light from the Sword Skills.

The cave was devoid of any human construction, including lighting. I pulled a torch out of my inventory and lit it before heading inside. A few steps into the cave, the light from outside disappeared and I heard the boulders respawn behind me. This cave was likely instanced, then. I probably couldn't send messages either.

The cave itself was nothing much to speak of; it was just… a cave. No estranged plant life, no odd formations, not even any monsters to speak of. As I continued further into the cave, though, a rotten stench began to permeate through the air.

After rounding a corner, I was greeted by… another corner, but this one was different from the last. The faint sound of flickering flames reached me, and light flooded along the wall. Maybe now there would actually _be_ something. I peeked around the corner…

Red. _Very_ red—almost black. That monster was massive, and with a high level to boot. I inched back towards the corner, more carefully this time, to get a better look.

The green, rotting hulk of a humanoid stood a good two, maybe two-and-a-half meters tall. Considering its skin color, and the notably missing patches of skin, this thing was definitely the source of the bad smell. It looked mostly normal, as far as being human-shaped went, save for one specific thing: it had giant swords fused into it as arms.

Its name was «Mysterious Shambling Immortal».

 _Not so immortal, is it…_

I shook the pointless thought off, and looked to the area behind the creature. The cave came to an abrupt end shortly beyond. On the wall were the two torches providing the light, and just in front of them was a small chest. What simplistic design.

The torches caused the monster to cast a menacing shadow along the cave's wall. Something about it was extremely off-putting. It seemed… darker than it should have. How could a shadow look so odd? The wall looked somehow strange, as well.

At that point, the monster noticed me. That was… not good.

"Caution to the wind, then…" I muttered. Since it was no longer necessary, I tossed my torch away to free up my off hand. I jumped around the corner and got ready to fight this thing. If I was lucky, it would be slow and its attacks would be easy to avoid.

The Immortal turned around and raised its sword-arms to attack—thankfully its face did not grace me with its appearance, as the monster was wearing a rusty helmet. Or maybe that _was_ its face.

The monster slammed its arms down with an immense force, lodging them in the hard rock of the cave floor. I was just out of range of its attack without even dodging. Its eyesight was probably long gone by now.

I jumped forward to get a quick slash in on its arm—the non-sword part of it. Nothing. Or at least no damage that I could see. My dagger barely cut into its flesh at all.

I leapt back out of the way just as it pulled its swords out of the ground. This time it crossed its swords in front of itself. I wasn't sure if it was going to charge or use a Sword Skill, so I backed up a few steps. Thankfully this thing was brutally slow, so I had plenty of time to think around it.

It looked like the latter was the case—its swords started to glow with the light of a Sword Skill, but it was… odd. Instead of the glow appearing along the blade uniformly, it manifested at the tip and slowly grew along the blade. And then down its arms… the glow started to envelop the monster's whole body.

 _Okay, time to run._ I had absolutely no clue what it was about to do, and I didn't want to find out. What kind of Skill covered the _whole body_?

I just barely made it past the corner when the Immortal screamed down the cave and slammed into the wall. It was unbelievably fast. The impact sent cracks shooting throughout the far wall, and it dealt enough damage to the monster to kill it instantly. The whole cave shook for a few moments after the impact.

"Wha… _What the fuck was that?!_ "

Visibly shaken myself, I waited to make sure that the monstrosity had disappeared before checking out the chest it was guarding. Inside it was… a handful of Cor, and an old, rusty amulet much like the one I had found up on the ridge of the third Floor. Seriously?

Annoyed, I turned around and started to leave the cave, but the cracks along the wall made me stop. One of them was much larger than the others… I kicked the wall around that area, and the rock crumbled away to reveal another tunnel. The inky blackness seemed a bit different somehow from the rest of the cave. It was extremely menacing.

After the display that the Immortal had just made, it seemed pretty obvious to me that going further was an absolutely terrible idea. I picked up my torch off the ground and made my way back to the entrance of the cave.

At this point, I was starting to suspect that something was up with the amulet I just found, and the necklace from up on the third Floor. There wasn't anything that proved they were related, though; they just looked similar. And considering the danger that this one was placed behind, it damn well better have been worth it.

I made my way to the boulders at the entrance and once again punched them down. The sudden pour of sunlight momentarily blinded me, so I shielded my eyes with my hand as I stepped out of the cave. Once the dust effects cleared and I readjusted to the light, I was able to spot a group of players a few meters up the path, gawking at me and the hole I just made in the cliff.

 _Ugh, jeez._ I turned the other way and started to head down the path, pretending not to notice them—

"Hey!"

Damn. I slowly turned back around to face them. "… What?"

"Aren't you one of Kirito's friends? Rei-san, right?"

"Eh?" Okay, that was weird. I took a better look at the person that spoke—kinda scraggly, red hair, a good bit older than me. It took me a moment to remember. This was the guy that Kirito had helped out at the start and his friends. His name was… Klein? Yeah, that was it. Like the bottle. "Um, yeah…"

"Say, I don't want to be too nosy, but what was that cave you just came out of?" Klein gestured towards the now-respawned boulders. "How did you even get in there, anyways?"

"Um…" The existence of Martial Arts was probably public knowledge by now, and the cave was basically worthless, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to tell him. Better than them hounding me over it. "You can… break down the boulders with Martial Arts. The cave's worthless though… and way too dangerous."

"Hmm…" Klein tugged at his messy goatee. "I'd at least like to take a peek inside." He turned to look at his party. "One of you guys should have Martial Arts, right?"

One of his friends spoke up. "Yeah, I've got it." He walked up to the boulders and gave one a solid whack with a Sword Skill.

… Nothing. It did nothing.

"Huh? That's odd…" I mumbled. The guy punched and kicked the rocks a few more times to no avail.

Klein looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "You said Martial Arts, right?"

I nodded and walked up to the boulders again. I gave a quick punch to one with Flash Blow. Again, a flash of light emitted from the cracks that spread throughout the rock. Now that I had seen that light again, I noticed that it wasn't the same color as the Sword Skill…

"Weird… how come you can break it, though? Is it because your stats are probably higher?"

"…" I glanced at the time. It was almost 5:30 P.M. My small adventure had taken a little more time than I expected; the cave had been kind of long, despite how empty it was. It was a bit of a walk from Starting City as well. I had something I wanted to check now, but I probably didn't have enough time right then… Still, it was an excuse. "I… have something I want to look into."

"Ah, hold up—" Klein started, but he was too late; I had already started hurrying off.

* * *

It was close to 6 P.M. when I made it back to the inn in Rovia. By now the town square had been filled with various players. I spotted a handful of the frontliners shopping through the few NPC vendors that were located on the plaza, so I did my best to avoid them. The rest of the players present were people visiting from the lower floors, just to take a look around the town—tourists, I guess.

When I entered the inn I saw that Kirito and Asuna had both already made their way down to the café, which was otherwise devoid of players. They were just waiting for me to show up. Asuna had her hood up.

"Oh, hey." I sat down in the chair across from Asuna.

"There you are. What have you been up to?" she asked.

I shrugged. "Killing time. Didn't really accomplish much."

"I see." She slid the menu that was sitting in front of her over in front of Kirito.

"Er… should we eat here?"

"I want to eat at one of the food carts outside."

Asuna seemed to be acting colder than usual. That must have been her way of responding to Kirito's behavior earlier.

"Okay… Do you want to go now, then?"

"That's fine."

Kirito looked at me to get my opinion. I shrugged in response; anything was fine with me.

It was already starting to get dark out; at some point after I had entered the inn, lanterns had been lit throughout the city. The light reflected off the water in such a way that the whole town appeared to glow. The display had drawn the crowds towards the gondolas. Dusk was likely peak operating hours for them.

As such, the lines for the gondolas were rather long. "Ugh, getting around is going to be a pain," I mumbled.

"Mm," Kirito nodded. "Swimming is…"

Asuna and I both glared at him.

"… Out of the question. We'll need to get to the market area, though… but food first."

We made our way over to about half a dozen food carts that were situated on the east end of the plaza. Most of the selection was unsurprisingly fish-based. However, most of it was in an Italian style, with a couple of the carts in particular selling seafood pizza and paninis.

"Fish, huh," Kirito said. He was probably remembering that thing that had chased us earlier today.

"Were you hoping for something more Japanese-styled?" I asked.

"Yeah… I guess I'll get one of the paninis. What about you two?"

"I'll have the same, then," Asuna said.

"I'm going to get some pizza."

The cart selling the pizza had a bit of a line, so by the time I had gotten my food Kirito and Asuna had already sat down on a nearby bench. At some point Argo had also shown up. I walked over to hear Kirito saying something about Argo's Hiding and his food.

"Ohh~, I see how it is, Kii-bou," the hooded info dealer said. "You'll gladly pay for Aa-chan's, but I don't get any, huh."

"Eh—" it took him a moment to process her meaning. "No, no, it's just a… a payment for an item she's going to be making for me later, that's all!"

He was probably referring to her plan to make us swimsuits. I glanced over at Argo while I nibbled on my pizza. "Same as ever, huh?"

Argo held up her hand in greeting as she plopped down on the bench next to Asuna. "Yo, Rei-chan."

Asuna looked between Argo and her panini apprehensively. I guessed that she was wondering if Argo was actually hungry.

"Man, don't give me that look, Aa-chan. Go on, eat up."

"Uh, yeah…"

"So, what's up?" I asked. "I'm guessing Kirito asked you for something."

"Yep. I got it done pretty quick, as Kii-bou requested. Generally faster service would mean a fee, but I could really go for a nice cheesy slice of pizza right now…"

A rat, indeed.

Before she had finished her sentence, Kirito had rushed over to the vendors and soon procured a slice of pizza loaded down with cheese.

He presented the pizza to Argo. "Sorry about the trouble. And Rei, you can sit down if you want."

I shrugged. "Meh, I'm fine."

Resigned, Kirito took his seat back on the bench. After he payed her, Argo produced what Kirito had requested from her—a map of Rovia. More specifically, a map of Rovia with every quest starting point located in the city marked.

"Ah, I see," I mumbled.

"Hm? Why do you need a map of the quests?" Asuna asked.

"That's a good question… I'd be able to find them all just by walking around; it wouldn't be that hard—er, no offense, Argo. I just want to be able to see it all at once like this, plus my memory of stuff is only going to get worse over time…"

After scanning over the map for a second, Kirito pointed at one of the quests in particular. "There, that quest wasn't here before, so that's our ticket to clearing the floor."

* * *

After we finished eating and Argo vanished to go do business elsewhere, it was time to go look at this quest we needed to do.

There was a small problem in that the quest was all the way in one corner of the town, and the gondolas were currently _very_ busy. We weren't necessarily in a hurry, but it was still a pain.

After contemplating the gondolas for a moment, Kirito seemed to come up with an idea. "Ah, that'll work!"

"Um…" Asuna mumbled.

Kirito poked her in the back to get her walking and started off towards the north end of the plaza, opposite from the gondola docks. "Here, I'll explain in a minute."

Since there were no docks on this side, it was just a sheer drop from the edge down to the water. It was fairly high up, too, so I backed away from it a couple steps even though there was a low fence. Asuna had backed away as well, obviously not trusting of Kirito's idea.

Kirito grabbed the hems of our cloaks to stop us. "Calm down, this will work fine."

"It's not fine!" we said in unison.

"You'll be perfectly fine, besides, both of you have higher Agility than me."

"Conveniently forgetting that I can't swim!" I glanced over at Asuna. "And also, um—"

Kirito took a few steps back once he saw a couple of gondolas coming down the waterway. The larger gondolas, such as these two, had large flat roofs over sections of them which provided a useful platform of sorts.

"Kirito, if you'd just—"

"I'll give you a countdown."

"Seriously—"

"Three, two—"

"If you would LISTEN!"

"—one…"

"God damnit, fine."

Kirito leapt across the channel using the gondolas as stepping stones. Reluctantly, Asuna and I followed suit. Our antics caused a commotion among the people on the gondolas below.

Asuna and I both landed on the other side just fine. Kirito, being ever the fool, barely managed to grab onto the ledge.

I crouched down to look at him. "Good job, genius."

He remained hanging off of the pathway and looked up at me. "Yeah, yeah, I get it…" He suddenly looked away to one side. "Um, Asuna…"

I stood back up and sighed. "I don't like wearing skirts for a reason, you know."

Asuna understood the issue of viewing angles immediately and turned bright red. She put her hands down over her skirt and hovered her boot above Kirito's fingers. "You better climb up, now."

"O-okay, okay!" Kirito quickly scrambled his way up the stone ledge.

"Well, that aside," I said, "what now? Are we gonna do this the whole way to this quest?"

Kirito shook his head, doing his best to avoid Asuna's glare. "Uh, nah. The rest of the canals aren't _that_ wide, so it could be possible to jump over them. Instead of that, though, we can probably flag down a gondola as it passes by." In addition to the ones that docked at the main plaza, there were enough gondolas to constantly be circling the city, so it only took a few moments to find one.

Of course, once we stepped foot in the gondola Asuna's sour mood instantly vanished—she was in gondola mode again. Kirito gave the boatman some coordinates and we set off for the northwestern corner of the town. It was relatively quiet as this was more of a residential area; a few NPCs could be spotted, but there were no players in sight. There was even a house for sale. I had completely forgotten that player-owned housing was a thing—back in the beta, it was just too expensive for only a month of gameplay.

I would hate living in Rovia, though. Kirito and Asuna agreed with me.

After a few minutes we arrived at our destination. For the most part the building looked no different from the ones surrounding it. The only difference I could spot was that it had large doors on one side that opened into the canals. A glance through one of the windows revealed a huge mess.

Upon entering the building, the first thing we spotted was an old man sitting in a rocking chair. His hair was white with age, but his rugged appearance betrayed that. He looked like a retired sailor. He must have been the questgiver NPC—there was an exclamation mark hovering over his head, after all. But…

"Is there anything I can help you with?" Kirito asked. It was a standard line for starting quests.

"Nope."

 _Well, that sucks._ I looked around the room to see if there was anything that might have helped. Most of it seemed dusty, like it had gone unused for years… It could be interpreted as just a bunch of junk that the old sailor had collected over the years, but to me it felt more like an abandoned storage room for a workshop. Random piles of old raw materials littered tables and the floor.

"…Sir, are you a shipwright?" I asked.

"Use to be," the man said in a gruff voice. "Not anymore. The Water Carriers Guild does all that now."

He didn't continue, so after a moment of confusion Kirito prompted him again. "Um, even so… would you be able to build us a boat?"

"Hmph." There it was—the _!_ morphed into a _?_. "I _could_ , but I don't have anything to make it out of; they control all the materials now, after all. But if you really do want one from me… first go to the forest to the southeast of here and get some bear fat—it seals the wood against the water. But keep an eye out for the bear king, cause he'll rip you in half like a beehive. Better to not mess with him. His fat must be much better than normal bears', though…"

And with that he shooed us out to get on with our new quest, the «Shipwright of Yore».

"Ugh, a collection quest…" I grumbled. "He'll probably have us collect wood after this too…"

"Hmm… when he mentioned the bear king, he said its fat would be better than normal bears, right?" Asuna asked.

Kirito nodded. "Uh, yeah… You'll see it a lot with quests like these. There will generally be a bare minimum you need to do to complete the quest, but you can get materials that are rarer or harder to collect to get a better result…"

I looked over at Asuna. Those were the eyes of someone that didn't want to compromise.

"Uhhh… well, how long is this going to take?" I asked. "I kind of want to go to sleep early today, and if this quest takes all night…"

"Oh right, you didn't sleep earlier… Well, I'd say it's going to take a while. If you think you're going to be too tired you can head back to the inn, I'm sure Asuna and I can handle it fine."

"Yeah, I'll do that. Uh… have fun."

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 **Hey everyone!**

 **Today we're back to my average word count. I would have liked to make this chapter longer, but I'd rather ensure that I'm able to release this on the story's birthday (2 already?! Jeez I'm slow at this), and I'm already quite happy with where the chapter is already. Considering my track record, it's a faster release than usual as well.**

 **Not much else for me to say today. Take care!**


End file.
